Fallen King
by Zenzao
Summary: The lost King of the Sidhe Courts has been freed from his prison within the Earth's core, loosed to regain his reign of dominion over all Fae of Summer and Winter disposition. In 72 hours his strength will return, the world plunged toward ruin at his second-coming, and only Harry Dresden, Winter Knight, has a chance to stop it. A/N: All chapters currently revised. Rating upped to M
1. Chapter 1: Tale of Oberon

I noticed the subtle changes in the air a moment after sliding the partially worn shirt over my head, the way that the few droplets of warm water still clinging to my hair and dripping around my neck cooled over almost instantly. Blinking in surprise as my breath visibly appeared in the air before my nose I glanced around at the few windows on the Waterbeetle and grimaced at the frost gathering into place across them.

Almost before the voice spoke I knew who was to blame, and it came as little surprise to me that she was showing up _now_ when Karrin had maybe fifteen more minutes before arriving for our 'date' together.

"Sir Knight." Mab's tone, chill and biting through the inhuman beauty contained within each note, greeted me from the doorway I had just strode through mere minutes ago.

Turning toward her I gave my own more reluctant greeting. "Mab." My voice sounded like gravel in a mixing machine compared to hers in that moment, and would have even if it wasn't still somewhat raw from the events with the defunct-Red Court only days ago.

She smiled with what could be mistaken for pleasure or amusement on a lesser being - but I knew better. I've had one too many interactions with the Queen of Air and Darkness, and I recognized that it was one of barely tolerated patience, a thinly-concealed malice waiting to strike. I took an uneasy set of steps away just to keep a good distance between us.

"_Queen_ Mab." She corrected me in the same tone with that same smile, slightly harder along the edges, smoothly gliding through the air toward me. As she did the temperature dropped another twenty degrees from what they already had, and I noticed that snow flourished beneath her feet and left a frigid trail in and before her wake, forming along the floor hazardously.

I didn't have either Ebenezar's old staff or my blasting rod nearby even if I wanted to try and put up some kind of visible, physical warning for her to back off, and the feeling that I was a gimped hare caught before a ravenous hawk couldn't be shaken off.

"Listen, I know you're probably here to collect on my end of the bargain- and I intend to keep my word regardless, but back the hell off and give me some breathing room here," I told her as sharply as I could manage at the moment. A belated, "My Queen," slipped out seemingly of its own accord a beat later.

A single wry, broken laugh escaped her luscious lips at that and I found out why a moment later when she gestured with one hand. Before I knew it I found myself on my knees and one hand before her, kneeling like an obedient little Fae. I barely had enough time to recognize my newly adopted posture to resist bowing my head completely, my eyes locked in just around her knees and the hem of her opalescent dress rather than her toes.

It fairly well hurt me for it, too. My muscles fought to bow completely before her will, and I fought just as viciously not to. My grimace descended to a silent snarl. Above my head Mab stopped just out of my reach- for all the good it did me even if I could have moved my arms anywhere - and let out another strangely broken laugh.

"That is right, Sir Knight, kneel before your Queen," she stated after a moment.

For all the good having the mantle of Winter Knight was and all of the power that had come with it, I was being reminded quite clearly of the hidden cons involved with that deal. But if it came down to making the choice over again, with Maggie's life on the line, I'd still choose to wind up here on my knees no matter the pain involved.

And with that said, I refused to allow my body to submit to Mab's will any further than it already had. It was a strain just to drag my shoulders upright, pressing with my other hand against one knee, but I managed to raise my sight up to her own. The cold fire in my eyes met hers and she read the defiance left in place. Her smile edged even further into something approaching the breaking point of her patience, then vanished altogether as she gathered a throne of black-ice between one instant and the next, and sat down before me in it.

It was only at that point that I noticed the thin slash marks decorating her form - from a foot away, her will bent me down irregardless of my stubbornness, the same as Vadderung and the now-deceased Red King had. I had no choice but to bow my head, but even still I avoided sinking the rest of my posture again.

As my eyes were forced downward I saw the rough slits etched into each wrist, and then into the middle of each calf as well. The color of each mark wasn't what I would have called blood under any definition that I had seen, and the edges were just a little too... _distorted_, almost like something she was wearing had melted into the flesh and clung just beneath the surface.

"So you've noticed," she said simply, all pretense fading from her tone - it was openly cold, cutting into my eardrums and coming just short of shearing them in half. A drop of blood leaked free and splashed across one knee. A moment later and with a blurred motion on the edge of my vision, my taut muscles relaxed and I fell backwards, crashing against the wall.

_Score one for my ego_.

I grunted and sat up, gradually, and a little unsteadily ascending to my feet. Being treated as her plaything, as she had done to me all those years ago in my office when we had met for the very first time, set an added inflection of anger in my tone when I spoke. "What do you want of me, Mab?" I demanded.

I hardly needed any reminding of the state of being Lloyd Slate had been left in for his rebellious actions toward her and Maeve, but that cold anger welling up inside of my heart just wouldn't settle down - I could smell it on her, in the blood oozing out, a distant emotion she was trying to keep carefully hidden away behind all of the rest, that heady scent of barely contained _fear_ as if for her very life.

_She's off balance and weak, terrified. Just __strike at those blooded marks to keep her unsteady and drag her down off of that fucking throne, press her into the ground like she deserves..._ I shook my head all of a sudden, realizing what my thoughts had been roving toward, and I recoiled. _Hell's bells, what just happened?_

A shrewd expression spread over her face while my own slipped into something akin to horror - if I had just acted upon that alien, rage-filled and predatory instinct, Mab would have skewered me a hundred different ways over. "So the mantle begins to lay its claim upon you, my Knight." She stated in the same tone as before. A handful of additional drops of blood leaked free from each ear in the aftermath, but I was too freaked out by the sudden implications to respond.

Seeing I wasn't going to answer that, Mab continued speaking. "What I want of you is something only you could provide to me. Something only a mortal wizard could accomplish in the coming days, and even then your new-found strength in Winter could be an undoing in and of itself."

I wanted to say something, to demand for her to stop beating around the bush and spit it out, but I clamped down on that urge with all the same effort that I had previously put into not bowing. _I can't even trust my own thoughts, now?_ Again I scented that fear upon Mab, whether I wanted to or not, and it set my breath hitching. It left me on the edge, quietly seething at my own inability to take advantage of the wounded prey, and my earlier concern over our roles was washed away.

But I knew that if I acted upon it, if I let myself believe that _she_ was the hare and I the hawk, I wouldn't walk out of the Waterbeetle again, her mysterious quest be damned.

As if growing tired of patience and my rapidly changing thoughts, Mab gave me a sharp look and I found my body dropping again to my knees. This time I didn't fight against it. If I couldn't stand, couldn't freely move, than I couldn't kill myself prematurely by reaching out and striking first.

Her warning delivered, she continued where she had left off. "Perhaps you mortals still have some scrap of knowledge of this tale," she began in a less damaging tone. It was still cold, but it emerged more contained. "The tale of _Oberon, King and fallen Lord of the Sidhe Courts_."

It took a moment after she said that for my brain to process the information, but I latched onto it like a drowning man would a life-raft. I had personally met the three different representations of the Sidhe Queens save for Titania herself, but I had never heard of a King before, and the nearest representations that came to my mind were the Erlking with his goblins and, perhaps, Kringle and his elves.

"What does that have to do with your task?" I asked her carefully.

Mab gestured to the cut on the inside of her legs, across her wrists. My eyes honed in and dilated as I focused upon them. A moment later I exhaled harshly and I closed my eyes to keep them from watching the obvious weak points.

"Long before your Merlin came about, farther even than the Vampire Court's distention and separation into four, when the realms only now distantly tied into the world were still fresh and thriving, _Oberon_ ruled over much of the Nevernever not already controlled by other gods," she explained. "Eventually his arrogance and pride grew to match his power and our King challenged for the right to rule over other portions outside of our domain. He set about his own oblivion by seeking the domain of the Dragons and entering a short-lived war."

Pausing a moment as if in remembrance, her tone returned to its malicious sharpness, and blood began to spill freely from my ears.

"Ferrovax and his sixteen kin destroyed Oberon's followers and gave rise to our loathing of iron in the process, for once defeated a cage of iron was wrought like never before at the Dragon's command. With his magic the King fought dearly against his imprisonment and was, as the Romans would later learn from Ferrovax, crucified at the core of the mortal world..." as she spoke I chanced opening my eyes again, and I watched the pale light in her own eyes grow dimmer.

I found myself sitting up into a crouch again as her will waned in the moment_, _weakening. _Now. Launch forward and claim her now!_ I grunted as my body rocked forward and then back again on the balls of my feet, straining to both take advantage of her and hold that desire back. It had been so long since last I had been with a woman, until Mab and I consummated my ascension to the mantle of the Winter Knight so shortly before. It truly, honest to god scared me that I was suddenly fighting a war against myself like this.

Before I could falter again Mab's eyes opened fully, watching the gleam in my own eyes, and she was radiating cold fury between one beat and the next.

"Such insolence! Be still again!" She all but hissed at me from between clenched teeth. I was rocked backwards by the sensations and emotions conveyed in that look, in the intensity of her words, and the sudden onslaught of her will crushing me down

Her eyes were widened completely as I was pressed into a subservient position, barely keeping my face from pressing into the hardened snow mere inches beneath it. Only then did she return to her point, and I could barely hear it through the throbbing, warm pain drizzling out of my ears.

"Oberon has never ceased to be the King of the Sidhe Courts, and his power though diluted by his wretched bonds still lives on within us all and his wives the most, Mother Summer and Mother Winter. His boundary of iron spread like a curse onto all of his children as it poisoned his strength and through _he_ to _us_!" She stated.

"These wounds I now bare are but the first sign that he is _freed_, Knight Dresden! Exactly where the wound was lined on the King so to does it appear on his descendants! Do you understand what that means?"

It was harder to hear through the pounding of my blood as it ran down and stained my shirt in thick splashes, but I managed a stark grimace in answer as the signs of madness Mab had demonstrated in meetings past manifested again, and the chill in the air sank deeper toward the freezing point. It managed to subdue the_ insane_ desires racing through my blood and granted me a brief respite of clarity again, and I was just able to lift my head up to meet her gaze. She stared down at me with her underlying fears suddenly shining through the cracked mask she had tried to maintain up until that moment.

Mab was more than just scared and angry.

She wasn't just panicked at the thought that Oberon was free.

She was utterly _terrified_, as a child slathered in their own blood and staring down an 800 lb grizzly bear from ten feet of distance would have been. My own fears felt suddenly insignificant beneath the presence and understanding that _Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, the fucking Winter monarch over half of Faerie and a force to contend with practically any opposition I knew of, _was losing control of herself.

I was swept away beneath a sudden, crushing realization of panic of my own as I understood the sheer power this guy commanded if _Mab_ was reacting in such a way.

_Hell's bells... I'm fucked._

* * *

_ Chapter one concluded._


	2. Chapter 2: Acceptance and Entrance

Slowly I felt the pressure against my body fade as Mab rose back to her feet, dissolving the throne behind her. The snow across the floor had risen to four inches in depth, sticking to the bottom of my feet and coating my fingers from where I rested uneasily. Most of it for a couple of feet around was coated red with my blood.

"Oberon is free within the Nevernever, Winter Knight. _Find him. Seal him away again._" She ordered with a forced calm to her voice that failed to reach her eyes. I wouldn't expect her of all people to start trembling, but a shiver slithered down her spine, and a sense of understanding seemed to speak to me from the same place as the raving fear - that such a being coming back into power again could bend the Queens to his will as easily as she had done to me.

That kind of force wasn't meant to walk in our world, not anymore. It was the reason the true heavy-hitters rarely strayed outside of their lairs in the Nevernever, relying instead upon weaker subjects and servants to do their bidding amongst the mortals, and on the_ very rare_ occasion when they did have to step in to do something personally, they didn't hang around very long even then.

They would break the world around them if they did.

I barely found my voice long enough to respond to what Mab had said. "Why am I the only one who can do this?"

That distant look came back into her eyes again as memories of the past played before them, and the temperature fell so far that the blood in my ears froze up. I heard her words as if through a murky sludge, the words blessedly faint. My frosted breaths came quickly enough to count as hyperventilation.

"Ferrovax would kill any of the Sidhe- for his own protection. His kind did not escape unscathed from Oberon's desires, and weakened though we Queens now are if the King should draw forth his reigns again.. '_than his Will be done_,'" she quoted on a note that still managed to ring in my ears.

I swallowed dryly as my own fear clawed away at my chest and every sense I had finally started screaming to find the deepest hole I could and hide there until this was all over. I'll be honest and say that I indulged that thought and the imminent wisdom it contained for about a small eternity, and even as I did so, I also knew that I couldn't find a place deep enough where pushing my head under the sand and waiting for the terror to fade away might even be a possibility.

I mean, Hell's bells, I'm pretty damn strong for a wizard of the White Council, but this fight was so far above my power grade, it wasn't just a matter of not being in the same zip-code - we weren't even on the same freaking _planet. _And I was still trying to recuperate from the damage and expenditure of strength that the last battle days ago had taken out of my if I had a hundred more years of experience, equipment, and knowledge to work with, I knew in my heart that it _still_ wouldn't have been enough preparation time.

I was also reasonably certain that, outside of my grandfather, almost no one else on the White Council that was stronger than I was would be able to make any kind of a difference, either. And we were currently out of defunct satellite stations to drop on Oberon's skull from high orbit.

Sometimes you just have to realize when your strength alone isn't enough. When you just can't dig any deeper and pull out something of a miracle in the eleventh hour. When the deck is so stacked against you, you may as well be blindfolded, deaf, and unable to use your hands.

Right then and there, I knew I couldn't do this.

Abruptly there was a loud knocking from outside, and Karrin's concerned voice echoed distantly down to my level, "Harry? Harry, what's going on in there?" Mab looked off toward the sound before striding toward the doorway again. She stopped just inside of it and told me one last thing before vanishing back into Arctis Tor.

"You have seventy-two hours before the King's strength revives to what it once was, my Knight. _If that should happen_... " without needing to finish her grim tidings she trailed off and faded from my sight about an instant before Karrin came stumbling down and into the room right where Mab had just been standing.

Her face fled from one emotion and wild thought to the next, settling upon imminently concerned as she glanced around at the conditions of the area and my own form covered in blood.

"My god, what happened in here?" she questioned in a tone of reprove and worry. She approached through the inches thick snow and crouched down to place a hand on either of my shoulders, lifting me upright and staring at my face. Karrin could see something of my state of mind reflected in my eyes, the way I was shuddering. What was coming affected me on an instinctual level as deeply as the instincts of the Winter Knight had driven me to lust for Mab, only now they compelled me to _escape_.

I wanted to cling to her, to hold her in that moment and never let go.

"Harry, what happened? What's wrong?" She asked me softly. I could barely make out her voice through the frozen blood in my ear-canals, but that gentle tone seemed to reach through the bundle of strangling terror and latch onto the real me underneath, shining a light through the overwhelming darkness. It wasn't long, lasting only a moment or two. Didn't have to be long, really. Staring up into her eyes, so full of concern and the need to protect _me_ of all people, that I was reminded of the last time I had looked upon her with my Sight open.

And that one, crystal-clear image of an beautiful angel with eyes of azure flame dredged up with it dozens more. Not just of her, and not just in my Sight, but of the reasons why I was even resting on the Waterbeetle right then and there - it reminded me of all of the things I had done, both good and ill, of all of the times that I had fought through my terror and managed to at least limp through to confront the _next_ instance of near-impossible odds, and then the one _after that_, in a line of hard-assed battles trailing all the way back to my very first real fight - against _He Who Walks Behind._

_And dammit if I'm not still alive and kicking._

I may not have always come through on my own merits, but I knew that the higher the odds were stacked against me, the harder I pushed to knock them back down to my level. This time I was just going to have to find a lever big enough to do that and then some.

And suddenly the fear of what was to come - it wasn't _gone_, but it was placated. Soothed. That cloying desperation _was_ vanquished, however_, _and I knew that it wouldn't find a way to seep into my thoughts again unless I willingly let it. I had too much left in my life to give up, roll over, and let some monster creep out from under the bed to eat me as I slept. If I was going to die during this endeavor, it was going to be on my feet and screaming my denial straight into its face.

I leaned up and kissed Karrin. Her eyes widened, her lips were tense, and her hands gripped my shoulders just a little tighter at first. But she gradually relaxed into it after a handful of seconds, and I only broke it off when the need for air overcame the abrupt romanticism I felt in that moment. "Thank you," I whispered to her.

Karrin blinked and pulled back from me, her emotions suddenly influx. "You're going to leave again, aren't you," she stated quietly.

"I have to." I swallowed dryly. "This is worse than Chichén Itzá. I don't think I've ever faced anything this large before... and I can't bring you, or Thomas, and maybe not even my grandfather into this one, Murph."

I wearily pushed up to my feet and stumbled a couple of steps toward the bathroom to get cleaned up, glancing at Karrin's concerned visage as I swayed slightly on my feet and hesitated in mid-step. I managed to run some warm water and gingerly set about melting the blood in my ears until they were unclogged again.

_Seventy-two hours_. _Hell's bells, but_ _that's a short time frame_.

She carefully walked up behind me and watched until I was done twenty minutes later. "This is it, isn't it?" She asked.

I only nodded my head. I knew I'd probably never get this shot again with Karrin. We had pushed too far, too hard, and gone through too much strife just to get this one night together. Backing out now would be breaking the camels back after everything else.

At least we had managed one kiss before the war was lost.

"Okay," she said, and then again louder as if trying to convince herself. "Okay. I'll... you know where to find me if you change your mind, Harry." She stared at me in the mirror and I met her gaze for a moment, and then in a swirl of bloodied, golden curls, Karrin Murphy walked up to the deck of the Waterbeetle and out of my love-life forever.

* * *

A short time later and my ears were dealt with, the bleeding contained, and I was standing inside Edinburgh. I had wasted roughly an hour of that precious countdown to doomsday healing up and preparing myself, taking measure of what I thought I was capable of and who I should go to with this.

As I had said earlier, it was improbable that anyone else on the White Council would be able to help me out with this. I don't know if even the Merlin would have the necessary oomph to contribute in a meaningful way, but if it was just a matter of swinging the bigger stick, than all of the Senior Council put together might not have been enough. Mab would have told me outright to seek them out if she wouldn't have simply made some kind of contact through her cats paws or messengers.

For whatever reason, she had sought _me_ out specifically for this task. That meant it _wasn't_ about who could hit the hardest- Oberon had essentially won that contest when he took on over a dozen capital-D Dragons in their prime turf and still shined their clocks quite nicely along the way.

So I had to find another way, a means more akin to what the Sidhe often relied upon- subtlety and entrapment. The only man I trusted on the Council enough for that was a man I had been at odds with from time to time, and the last time we had spoken he had forewarned me of the dangers of Demonreach.

I could have tried my grandfather, but frankly I had relied on him too often over the last few years, and Blackstaff or no, I didn't want to risk his life again after what we had barely survived at Chichén Itzá.

I knew the Gatekeeper had a different measure of power than the rest of us and that he was willing to at least consider helping out when it came to this kind of thing stirring up, as he had when the former Summer Lady, Aurora, had gone mad so many years ago. It was worth a trip to try and convince him to give me a hand again now.

After wandering through the halls and past the occasional young Warden in place I found Rashid's dwelling here and stepped through the open doorway, pausing just inside to knock with the end of my borrowed staff.

Silence followed.

I looked around uneasily as that silence stretched without interruption.

Warily I tapped my staff again before stepping deeper inside and calling out, "Rashid? Gatekeeper!" into the large room. The man himself stepped out of the shadows toward the back of the room at the second attempt and regarded me with an equally wary stance, gripping an ornate gray staff in hand.

"Doom follows you deeply, doesn't it Dresden?" He questioned slowly.

I frowned at the word play. "Care to explain that a little clearer?" I asked him in turn.

"Hrn." Without answering he gestured to either side of me and the doorway soared shut behind my back and locked into position with no more sound than a soft rush of wind.

I didn't get a sense from him that he was going to attack, but I had learned to have a back-up plan in place irregardless of what the situation looked like. I gripped my staff tighter and began focusing some will into it just in case.

Rashid simply shook his head and lowered his own staff before setting it aside and approaching one of the couches near the back wall.

"I suppose I should welcome you to my abode, _Knight_ Dresden," he stated in a soft tone that nevertheless cleared the distance between us easily. Hearing him repeat my current title was more than a little unnerving, particularly in the inflection he applied to it. "So, welcome. If you'd care to release the Soulfire burning that staff and settle down we could begin discussing what brings you here." His tone didn't change in the slightest as he mentioned Soulfire, and while I wondered how he had known to recognize that power gathering, I also wondered why I had delved into _that_ particular source.

I slowly let go of my gathering energy and will and looked around for somewhere else to sit other than beside him. He motioned toward another couch nearby and I took the seat a little rougher than needed, settling the staff across my lap in easy reach.

He looked at me a little closer before making another note of... _curiosity_, I suppose, and sighing. It stirred up a flicker of annoyance.

"You seem to attract more trouble than should be mortally possible, Dresden. All of the battles you have had to endure, the sacrifices made. And now _this_." He just stared at me until I cracked and glanced away first.

"How much do you know?" I asked evenly.

"What, your recent falling into Winter's Court? Or your succession from Hellfire? Perhaps you'd even care to know why Oberon has been freed after ten thousand years?" He questioned in turn. Warning bells began ringing in my head as he went from one point of contention within my life to the next, and he let out a low laugh at my bewildered expression. "I study more than just the Outer Gates, Dresden. I look in on the Nevernever in ways you can not yet realize. I saw your... _acceptance ceremony_ with Mab, as I suspect most of Faerie did," he explained.

"Likewise, I have my own sources that I turn to and confide in, just as you have..." he paused once as though considering something different, then deciding against it, "yours. The nature of one _fire_ to another is easily scented considering the scar it gave me," gesturing toward his face where I knew he was burned his answer only opened up a new area of consideration.

_When did he encounter Hell or Soulfire?_ But Rashid pushed onward without giving me a chance to ask, and though it might have been interesting to have heard his backstory, I knew that it wasn't as important as what he might know about the imminent threat.

"The Sidhe King was secured within a hallowed and hollowed section at the depths of the Earth. This planet's core was the perfect prison for all of the swirling, pure metal at it's heart, but the space opened left it available to others who knew where the opening Way could be found. I can not yet fully answer _who_ has unchained him from that place, but I may answer _why_ more easily."

Rashid looked over his shoulder toward the shadows where he had seemingly emerged from earlier. I followed his gaze and saw a pale ring of gem ran the length of the wall in a vertical loop- it looked like a summoning circle, but I had never seen or heard of one being placed in such a position, let alone one of crystal.

A flicker of motion within drew my attention to a black-skinned creature scarred with green-highlights, yellow-eyes looking out from sunken depths. I felt an inexplicable draw, a sudden fiery rage to smote the figure before me as much as bow down and obey his orders. Almost against my will I stood up and approached with slow strides, until only a foot separated me from the seeming-reflection. I saw it resembled one of the usual Sidhe I had come to recognize, at least it had once upon a time, but age and damage had not been kind to the formerly pristine and gallant features, and the once-smooth skin was torn from the bone in many places. In others the skin was left charred and scarred from brutal flames, with the muscles underneath jutting against the flesh sharply and standing out in unimaginable ways.

"_Be wary what you touch_, _Harry Dresden_!" Rashid's voice cut through the conflicting desires of obedience and hatred that had settled into place the moment I took in the sight of the creature, and I realized with a start that my own scarred hand had risen toward the surface slowly. When the Gatekeeper spoke I had just-barely half-an-inch before contact would have been made with the image.

Rashid stood at my side without my notice until now, and looking down further I saw his hand was wrapped about my elbow tightly to keep me from reaching all the way forward. Looking back up, the yellow gaze of the creature seemed to glow brighter for a moment as if in frustration before I was pulled away and shoved into the couch facing away from it.

Rashid took my former seat and looked me over.

"_That_ is their King in his current, newly freed form. No more a thing of beauty, forever marred by the Dragon's tongue and blade," he stated. "A mere reflection, a _shadow_ I was able to capture before he was taken." Breathing a low sigh Rashid looked more closely at me before continuing. "I can see it in your eyes that you are aware, on some degree, why the Sidhe King walks the Nevernever again. He intends to smother the world and continue to claim new domains in his own name, and in so doing eradicate the Old Order that has endured throughout the millenniu in his wake. A war of untold scale, Dresden, that would ravage this Earth and all the realms still connected to it."

My head was beginning to swim with confusion from all of the information I had received, not only from Mab but now Rashid as well, to say nothing of the mental-whammy I had suffered with a glance. The scale just kept rising higher and higher. For a moment I considered what might very well become the final card to be played if everything else fell apart in the end - if I couldn't find a means of stopping him, if I couldn't outwit or overcome him, then it might very well come down violating perhaps the greatest Law of Magic available.

_The Outsiders._

I shook my head. Inviting in something like that would mean the eradication of the world, the universe itself. They wouldn't target Oberon unless they had nothing better to do, choosing to wreak havoc and anarchy on a cosmic scale first.

A voice seemed to whisper in my mind, _an__d if Oberon threatens to do the same?_

I grimaced. I _couldn't_ allow it to come to that.

A bitter sigh escaped before I could contain it and I looked back up at the Gatekeeper, a simple question needing to be asked.

"Why?" I questioned. "Who could benefit from this?" Rashid stared at me in silence for a few seconds, as if unsure I had really asked such a thing.

"When was the last time that you have slept proper, Dresden? I do not mean to insult you, but surely you are quicker to piece together these things on your own," he stated in a quiet tone.

A frustrated grunt was my immediate follow up. "Maybe you missed a few things back on Earth while watching the Nevernever?" I shot back with a return of that anger I had felt before.

A brief silence followed that as Rashid closed his visible eye and moments later I _felt_, rather than heard, the _whisper of power_ flowing from his mouth as he spoke to someone else. Before a minute was gone his eye flickered back open and he gave me another considering once-over.

"Hrn. Perhaps you are right. It would seem you do have a valid reason for being so weary at this critical time," Rashid stated and stood up. "You do not yet realize what you have done in destroying the entire Red Court. It could be said that much the same will happen to the rest of the world and realms if the Sidhe King is not stopped, but that is for another time, I think."

Picking up his staff again, he began to pace away. "I can not offer you the exacting answers that you have sought by coming here, Harry Dresden," he added in that same quiet, neutral tone.

I pushed up to my own feet slowly and scowled at him, opening my mouth to speak when he brought up one finger in a silencing gesture.

"Do not presume that I can not give you aide in other manners, however, just as I have some small amount of knowledge. When you leave my rooms here you will find that this trip has not been for nothing."

* * *

Stepping out of a hole into the Nevernever is rarely pleasant. All too often it dumps you into something unnatural, likely into something dangerous to your health. Others it simply slings you into a living nightmare and lets you fend for your life. Rarely is it a relatively pleasant journey, more often disguising the unsavory aspects until they step out to play. The farther out you go from the realms easily accessed from the Earth, the less _natural_ and more dicey they come.

So trespassing into a wholly-alien dimension, for example, one where the very air you breath, the sights you see, the entire plane about you makes it well known that you flatly _do not belong _within such a space is much the same- only a thousand times harsher on the psyche and soul in addition to the physical unease.

Rashid had helped me out as I had hoped for. He had gotten me the access route into _here_, within the Dragon's Domain, something I was beginning to realize had to have cost him a lot more than he had let on an hour earlier. If I could speak with Ferrovax or one of his kindred, it might be possible to find out how he had stopped Oberon the first time. Hell, he might have been actively interested in picking up the hunt himself and finishing the job this time around.

Even as I thought that, however, I felt an itch in the middle of my spine that just wouldn't go away. It seemed to crawl up along my neck and spread along my shoulders, and trail down to my hips and feet below. It was apparent that mortal man, be it wizard or otherwise, was _not _meant to stand here. We just weren't quite able to take wholly fit into the conditions of this dimension, as if everything was on an off-kilter alignment, and I could _feel _how unwelcome I truly was as a human here. It made me wonder if the true Outsiders felt the same way when they managed to trespass into this universe.

The Gatekeeper had handed me a vial before I passed through the first Way on the journey to this place, with a warning to drink it slowly before I came out on the final jump, and I had listened and done as told. Some of the fatigue from the battle days ago was gone now, and a little more clarity to my mind had gathered. Whatever that vial was, I suspected it was probably also the only thing keeping me from contorting to the rules of matter here and being shaped into a dodecahedron or something instead of retaining my natural shape.

I tried to ignore the burning sensation in my veins every time I took a breath of air. I could have been breathing _plasma_ instead of oxygen for all I knew about this place, and that little vial was pulling triple-duty to process it well-enough.

"Okay, Harry, time to get a move on. This place is bad enough without just standing around looking like an appetizer to some wandering, hungry wyrm." I felt a smidgeon better snarking about the situation, and set off in what I was assuming to still be the westward direction and where the distorted, made-of-light-and-metal semi-solid trees were less densely crowded.

The black-blue sky overhead was illuminated with the hum of visible energy streaks in place of stars, flickering back and forth as if alive_. _They probably were, for all I knew.

Eventually the damp soil beneath my feet grew firmer and turned to solid copper, and the freakish trees conformed solely to various metals that stood stiffly and firmly in place. So far I hadn't picked up any other creatures around, and once the hum of energy faded with the ground and such I began to feel my unease rising to another level at the stillness and silence.

I had to call up a small flame for light after a few more minutes, and soon enough was rewarded for that with the sight of a pair of large iron doors set into the sky horizontally, ten feet off the ground and apparently connected to... well, nothing. Just floating, as if that was perfectly natural.

"Dammit, did you have to violate the laws of physics even further?" I muttered quietly, hesitantly stepping closer and pausing beneath them.

"_But who decides what the Laws are if not for those who created them?_" A throaty voice questioned from deeper ahead of me.

I gripped my staff tighter and pointed it off toward the mystery-speaker, smoke curling off it as tendrils of power slowly seeped inward from my instantly pulled together will. And with it came that rage I had contended with just hours ago, roaring into my veins, demanding that I struck _now_ and smote the unseen creature with a vengeance that was almost primordial, truly _ancient_. I found myself drawing even more strength forward as the figure slithered out of the darkness into the faint light from the still flickering flame in my spare hand. I knew to dance back quickly to avoid its now-observable reach, still welling up the power but suddenly struggling not to reduce it to ashes.

_You're here for a reason! Killing it might very well- it... it will serve the Godking, and raise his honor higher!_ My thoughts betrayed me again, and this time I could do nothing to stop them, only heatedly assess the monster I was about to burn down to cinders within a matter of seconds. The flame in my hand danced higher and burned hotter.

With the jutting, wedge-shaped head of a dragon, the angular and rough body of a snake, two leathery-wings jutting from the back, and as it grew closer still a barbed tail, the gray-bodied Wyvern tilted it's brown-eyed head to one side and sniffed at the air twice in quick succession.

I had seen illustrations at Edinburgh before, but the sheer size of the creature was more than mere drawings could convey. It might have been impressive in another time, under different circumstances, but none of that mattered in the moment. Once its lower body was coiled up under it like a snake studying its prey, it still towered over me by two feet easily, and just as wide across. The wings alone stretched six feet apiece individually and slowly wrapped around it's middle almost protectively, and I noted that while the front was rough-textured, the back reflected my light cleanly and almost seemed to be made of polished stone.

"_You._.. _you have _his _scent in your blood, and yet_... His _as well. Deeper than blood. Etched harsher into your body, or_..." the Wyvern puzzled slowly, still in that same deep rumble. For some reason it seemed as if the energy I sought was slipping away from my grip the longer I tried to hold and gather it. _Kill the forsaken beast and be done with it,_ my fury crowed righteously.

The Wyvern blinked once, scenting the air and the barely contained power I held, and the eyes suddenly transformed from their assessing state. The shifted into a vibrant red and glowed with malicious intent. Distantly I knew exactly what that meant, and I also knew I wasn't about to be filleted on the fangs starting to rise from it's maw, relinquishing my failing efforts to contain my power.

Thrusting the staff forward at the same time as it launched the upper body toward me, I cried out, "_Pyrofuego_!"

* * *

Chapter two concluded. 


	3. Chapter 3: Passing through the halls

The air before the Wyvern began to ignite and combust with pale flame as it struck, driving butcher-knife length fangs through the rush of heat and down toward my undefended chest. I had already been expecting the creature's outer skin to be resistant, but the way it didn't even so much as _flinch_ from driving itself snout-first through a blaze normally capable of drilling a hole in a magically-reenforced human body left a sour taste in my mouth underneath my anger.

Whatever split-second advantage I had would be over once it reached me - which is why I aimed the majority of my _oomph_ at the more obvious of the two weak-points the scaled beast couldn't defend from assault, the gaping jaws. My potent fire drove forward and, while the outer edges and overall concentration of shape were weakened by my slowness to act, the center had come together exactly as intended. Like a lance, blue-white fire four- and fire-hundred degrees hotter than the rest sizzled through the ivory incisors and boiled down into its gullet.

I dropped back and rolled the instant I had finished releasing my power into the spell, abruptly feeling unsteady and lightheaded, and I managed to avoid having my head chomped down on by inches. Instead its sudden lunge drove down and into one shoulder, the arrested momentum from the impact of my spell slowing it enough and shearing through the lower four inches of tooth that I wasn't killed right then and there.

Those ivory fangs still penetrated my heavily-enchanted duster as though it were butter, three and four thick, slightly-blunted edges squeezing down on my bone and muscles with hundreds of pounds of force. I screamed as my joint popped free, numbing the whole arm over, and then louder still as the vicious _heat_ emanating from its throat scalded the underlying flesh.

For just a moment our eyes made contact and I saw, and knew, that the effort had at least partially succeeded - for every moment of agony it inflicted on my upper body, the fire burning down into the belly was causing just as much damage to its internal organs.

And then the fell beast twisted its head sideways in its imminent death-throes and what _very_ faint satisfaction I felt was obliterated beneath the rough embrace of unconsciousness.

* * *

Waking up on a cold stone floor is a novel experience.

Waking up chained through the _holes in your shoulder bones_ to the cold stone floor is one that I am hoping to never repeat again, particularly as I did not yet realize that highly unsavory detail until _after_ making to sit up and coming upon the highly-enlightening situation in between bouts of screaming anguish.

My shouts rang along the torch-lit walls for a few more moments before I could find the will to grit my teeth together and attempt to block the sensation out, gripping for anything my fingers could clamp down on to help distract from the pain but coming upon nothing, not my staff or even my duster.

Strangely enough it was that last thought that I was able to focus on.

_Who the hell stole my duster? That was the same duster Susan gave me before she left, and some fucking dragon comes along and _steals_ it? Ow, dammit!_

Groaning I managed to finally get into the least-painful position I could given the little slack there was to work with and slid down in exhaustion once again, truly at a bone-deep level now. Whatever I had left in the tank magic-wise had long since vanished and all that remained was physical strength and whatever rested in the bands around the fingers on my hands.

It was only at that point that I heard the weighty _thump_ of something approaching.

Out of the shadows at the end of the long stone hall ahead came a small flicker of light every now and again with smoke trailing to the sides of it, and though it had been several years now, I immediately recognized Ferrovax's presence with a pained grimace.

But the creature that appeared in time was far from that of the Roman Legionnaire-armored Dragon I had met all those years ago. This one looked well beyond his best years, with the skin draping in several areas along the face and creeping slowly down over the arms and fingers like a badly sewn-together suit. That same flicker revealed itself to be coming from within the back of his mouth as the smoke drifted out of the nostrils, a low kindling sound occurring on every low exhalation of his breath. The armor worn by his form fell under what I would have called the mongol horde, and the swaying blade dancing back and forth at his left hip on each step seemed to be a scimitar, the edges still honed to a shining edge.

He stopped about a foot away and studied me with no small amount of distaste running along the sagging features, and I was more than happy to return the look in kind, right hand clenched into a tight fist and causing the bands therein to grate against my skin as a reminder.

I may have been dead-exhausted, pinned down, and anguished with pain, but there was still _something_ left in the rings from the Red Court battle that I could use as a last defense if he started fingering the hilt of his sword much. And, as if daring me to do anything, a few more moments the Dragon did exactly that. He moved so quickly that I had only registered his motions when that curved sword was coming down across my upper body. I had zero reaction time. One millisecond he was glaring down at me imperiously, the next polished steel was descending at my arm.

I flinched and waited for the brief flare of pain that would follow his attack.

Instead I heard the soft _clunk_ of heavy iron rolling off of my flesh and sinking down to the stone beneath it. No pain, no clean slash marks to my underlying, burned skin, simply a perfectly cut restraint. I let out a sharp breath as he stepped back and returned the weapon to the obi hanging around the waist, eyes roaming over the wound as he did so before reaching down and literally yanking me to my feet and off the remains of the chain leading into the floor.

I didn't notice how the sections that had rested in my shoulder were bleached white with faint veins of _green_ and _blue_ interspersed throughout, as my stomach chose that time to empty itself from the sudden vertigo and blood loss.

When I was done dry heaving, the Dragon released a tone of disgust and pushed me onward down the shadowed hall, and eventually through an overhanging stone arch that turned out to be another doorway in this place.

* * *

We emerged an indeterminate time later to a more brightly lit hall with even greater sized doorways, and soon began to pass the occasional side-passage where activity within could be heard but not seen.

Weak, frustrated, and not to mention embarrassed, I finally asked to know what the point of our walk was. In answer, the Dragon increased his pace and came to march at my side, and then reaching out to grip by right shoulder tightly enough to make both myself and the bones there groan, he Flew us forward.

And I do mean that.

From walking at a simple pace to soaring at a rate that the entire halls blurred together and my stomach threatened to go into dry heaves again, we very rapidly came into the chamber of our destination, and I was released to collapse on the floor again as I had before Mab on the Waterbeetle. I heard him take Flight once more without a word and then settle into position somewhere further ahead.

I was really starting to get tired of falling to my knees. It was a struggle to keep my stomach from rebelling uselessly again, and the pain in my arm returned as weight was forced onto it. Tunnel vision blurred out the edges of my world. I finally clenched down on my gut with my injured arm pressing against it, leaned back against the doorway, and pushed upright to my feet. The darkness held a few seconds longer before abating, and as it did I could take stock of the situation and my surroundings.

About twenty yards ahead and sitting at the head of a large table Ferrovax spoke to the other Dragon to his left in murmurs. He was still dressed up like I had last seen him, looking none the worse for wear, and I realized that I felt nothing of the previous anger, the burning desire to attack him, as I had the Wyvern. I was still plenty angry about my duster missing, and now about being dropped like a rag-doll, but nothing that felt like it came from outside of the norm.

The third chair to Ferrovax's right was absent, and I couldn't have cared why even if I wanted to right then. Anger and exhaustion do not blend together to make a good outcome. Whatever Rashid had given me previously had apparently run out while I was unconscious.

_How much must a man bore before his time has come?_

I didn't notice how my internal voice was lighter than usual, enough so that it was hardly recognizable as my own, or that the thought had come from deeper within than was usual. I didn't notice it because roughly at the same moment Ferrovax turned his attention toward me and his presence and will pressed in like a physical weight that drove out bone-deep weariness.

"Serenthax and I congratulate you, Wizard Dresden. The Fae poisoning in your soul is gone." He stated simply, as though it were nothing more out of the ordinary than the sun setting.

* * *

Chapter Three concluded.  



	4. Chapter 4: An old friend revisited

Whatever it was the Dragon told me went in one ear, hit a road block, and was promptly detoured right back out the way it had come by the pounding of my heartbeat, itself running somewhere in the excess of three hundred beats a minute beneath the far-older figure's attention.

If the other Dragon had looked old and worn compared to Ferrovax, this confirmed just how diminished he truly was. I felt like my breath was coming through a straw filled by cement, and the already agonized muscles across my upper body strained further, trying to draw back and away but unable to escape the flesh that bound them in place.

It rated within the top three most miserable experiences in my life, and frankly I'm not so sure Shagnasty's initial glimpse was any worse. Getting pushed around by the deceased-Red King's will, and ending Susan's life only a short time thereafter, fell to a distant third.

Ferrovax gave a self-satisfied smile in my direction before he directed his attention away and turned back to speaking with the other Dragon, and I exhaled so hard in relief that it hurt.

What the hell was I even doing here, honestly? Mab had pointed me indirectly in this direction with her story and Rashid had opened the pathway for me, but was it really where I should have started at? What did I even have to try and barter information with the Dragons for in the first place? The way I had been reacting lately, I was just another enemy invading their territory.

The fact that I had been attacked and held prisoner made sense.

Being led to this point and then_ scared witless_ but otherwise left further unmolested did not, and I remembered after another few seconds seeing Ferrovax's lips move but not processing one damn word he had spoken.

_Typical. He might have just announced I'm being put into their stew for dinner tonight and I wouldn't have a clue._

I watched the two of them for a short while before the other Dragon took Flight again in the middle of something Ferrovax was still saying, earning a brief flicker of his eyebrows creasing together before his expression smoothed over again. Looking down at the table he picked up a metallic scroll and began perusing it as he talked to me in an almost absent voice.

"I expect you would like a proper meal, then. It is not oft enough a mortal is released from her machinations, and farther still since I had the opportunity of serving one with dinner," he called out.

I grimaced at his choice of words, confused, and caught the hum of dry laughter coming from his throat even at that distance, roughly thirty feet.

"Wizard Rashid has made the payment for your entry, after all, and it would be remiss of me to renege on such an agreement. And now guaranteed as we are that you will behave of your own accordance rather than that of a puppeteer, I welcome you once and once alone to join me at this table," he said.

_That_ sent warning bells jingling around my head like I had stumbled into the middle of Kringle's shop on Christmas Eve. But it also made an unpleasant sort of sense when I tried to process it - I had become a part of Winter, a servant of the Queens. That included both Maeve and, with a shudder I couldn't suppress, Mother Winter. And if _they_ were only tethered to the will of Oberon, than I had been yanked back and forth just like he had said, a puppet obeying the strings. It was the only way to explain the wild malice I had felt toward the Wyvern, and what Mab had said.

I stood up as best I could in light of that. I felt imminently _used_. Unclean. _Someone else was in my head, directing my actions._ It was the kind of thing I had feared happening when I had first picked up Lasciel's coin, that I had somehow managed to avoid a second time when Peabody had poisoned most of the White Council and Wardens.

I almost asked him what he meant when he said I was guaranteed not to dance to Oberon's whims again. Instead I thought about it. The Gatekeeper had chastised me for not doing that so far when we were talking. I didn't feel anything untoward against Ferrovax, or the other Dragon, or, looking further, the few Wyverns present. I didn't want to attack. I just felt drained, angry at everything about this situation in general.

"What did you do to me?" I called ahead to him darkly.

Ferrovax ignored the question and continued perusing the scroll in his hands for a few more moments, then he set it aside and picked up another.

I pushed away from the wall and began approaching. My broken, somehow-not-bleeding, maybe-dislocated-still shoulder twinged with every step. I ignored that lesser pain as best I could and walked right up to the table before him. "What did you do to me?" I repeated in the same tone.

In answer, Ferrovax turned his full attention upon me again, and I was reminded of how stupid I was being in disrespecting a force of nature. You don't condescend to a volcano, you get the hell out of dodge when it starts erupting.

My eyes rolled up into the back of my head and I collapsed where I was, blacking out.

* * *

When I opened my eyes again, it was to a dim yellow light illuminating a small circle on the ground.

Pacing warily around me was the better-looking doppelganger known as my subconscious, and for the first time in memory he looked about as frazzled as I did. The normally smooth outfit he wore was torn around the sleeves and left shoulder in the same place the Wyvern's fangs had pierced my actual body, his hair was unkempt, and his features were set in a definite grimace. But his stance remained as perfect as ever and his attention focused on me the moment my eyes opened.

"About damn time you answered. I've been trying to contact you ever since the Red Court extinction in Chichén Itzá." He snapped.

I sat up without answering and his nostrils flared.

"Of course, _now_ you choose to be obnoxious." He added in the same tone, "I suppose that it is better this way, so continue to shut up and behave so I can explain what in the name of _all hell_ you think you're doing out there and why it isn't working."

I honestly couldn't recall him acting like this in memory and, as with Mab before, it more or less put me on guard and told me how dire the situation was.

"Unlike you, I was actually paying attention to what happened and was said around us after the Wyvern finished its job. The Dragons used the same technique on you that they tried on Oberon in the ancient past during the short lived war, and unsurprisingly the assault worked. All dealings you have with the Sidhe have been eradicated- do you understand what this means?" he questioned, and then hesitated only long enough to see in my eyes the answer he wanted. "The Winter Knight bargain with Mab isn't the only deal you had with the Sidhe, Dresden! The original deal with the Leanansidhe as a teenager to give you the strength to defeat Justin is _no more a part of you_." He stated seriously and quietly.

For once I did a double-take.

"Did you-" I began and he cut across, "_Yes_. You may still have the knowledge, but you lack the might to back it up any further. Even if you were healed on the outside you would die, and quite easily, performing a mere quarter of the stunts with magic that you have managed in the last few years," he explained.

My mouth went dry while he continued. "The only possible benefit from all of this is that Oberon won't have the same sway as he has demonstrated so far - and let me tell you right now that I would prefer to never be subjugated to such a will again, but making it to wherever he is resting right now, let alone _resealing_ _him, _is impossible as we are," he told me gravely.

"What are I supposed to do about it, then?"

I was shocked, yes. More than a bit terrified again. I was even more crippled _now_ than I had been aboard the Waterbeetle.

And another unsavory detail was that I had no idea how long had passed since entering the Dragon's Domain. He might have known, but for all I knew, it might already be approaching the final stretch.

"Despite these setbacks there is nothing stopping you from making another deal, and indeed I've been over this time and again while watching you go from bad to worse to _deservedly defeated_." His tone had gathered a note of condescending to it toward the end, and I frowned but didn't answer, pushing up to my feet at last. "The timing of Oberon's release was not a coincidence, Dresden. Someone out there _knew_ when you would be weakest, _knew_ that Mab would choose you for this task, and they _knew_ that you would not refuse it. All of this has been set up according to some mad-scheme and we _both_ know how many wish you dead or worse," he stated with a pointed glare.

I ignored it. If I acknowledged that right now I might just crumble again. "So they broke one of the Laws against meddling with time. Doesn't help me out any," I said.

He countered, "No, but that wasn't the concept that I am trying to drill into your obstinately-thick-skull! Every step taken so far has been done according to _their_ plan, and if they can see far enough ahead to know you would be broken out of Mab's frozen talons, than they would be expecting you to do something remarkably stupid and self-sacrificial in order to put a stop to Oberon. You can't contact the Fae here even if you wanted to, and it would be suicide to try and speak with Mab again after being saturated with the Dragon's presence; your broken connection has no doubt driven her further into insanity regardless."

At that he looked away from my face and over one shoulder without adding anything more. Slowly, and with a great reluctance, I craned my neck and shoulder around to see what had his attention, and there she stood.

Well, stood as best she could with half her form decayed, her tunic scorched around the edges and torn open at others to reveal marred flesh. Her legs were only partially recovered and what remained of the right arm would have turned my stomach under normal circumstances.

"_Hello again... my host_."

Her voice showed no sign of the obvious pain still left behind by _He Who Walks Behind's_ attack some years ago, and I stared with my mouth agape. She should have been truly dead and gone, but here the shadow of the fallen again Lasciel was once more, and it was at that point that I began to realize what he meant by _another deal_.

"Lash," I murmured softly after another few seconds of staring.

She managed a partial-smile before shuddering, and a thin layer of flesh crept up over raw and exposed muscle just past the elbow.

"Take up the _coin _and between the three of us, you will be able to resist the greater temptations that befall other hosts, Dresden. You _must __have_ the strength to overcome what lays ahead," he told me in the same soft tone I had addressed her with, coming up to stand at my side. "No one else would expect you to take it. You can stand on your own terms again, defy their overarching reach to destroy you from afar," he paused as Lash gave another weak shudder and more damage was slowly undone. "You've already taken the mantle of Winter Knight to protect your family. The coin is just another conduit of power, _Harry_. _We can control it_."

Lash didn't say a word, only watched with saddened eyes as I stood there in silence, and at length I finally gave my response.

"You stand just as much a chance of suffering for this as I do, Lash, so tell me. Just how likely will we all make it through this alive and happy with or without her coin." It was meant as a question, but I just couldn't muster the energy to convey it as anything more than a tired statement.

"We _won't, in the long run. But for this time you will have the security you need to endure her presence, a boon of thirty-six hours that we may grant you, my host,_" she answered slowly and carefully.

"That's all? And what happens after that?"

She tried to shrug and failed. "_I perish as an individual once more, absorbed back into her being. Your alter-Id will hold out some hours longer before she truly embraces your subconscious mind._"

The three of us fell quiet for a time at that, they awaiting an answer that could quite possibly mean their end if I agreed.

On the other hand was a guaranteed death, no two ways around it.

No Winter Knight power, and Hells bells, not even the strength my godmother had sold me all those years ago? It couldn't be done without _something_ at my back, especially not now that it seemed clear that there was Black Council involvement, and between the three of us I stood a better chance of relinquishing the coin before it was too late.

As if an omen of foreboding, Lasciel's sigil itched against my hand and I scratched at it without thinking.

"Okay." I said in the same flat tone, somehow keeping my tiredness out of it. "Help me call the coin."

* * *

Before my eyes even opened up I felt the fingers of my scarred hand clamp down on a small-but-heavy weight pressing into the palm, and a resurgence of the pain that once engulfed it during the firefight against Mavra awoke along every breadth of tissue, of muscle, seemingly carving a pillar of flame straight into the bones beneath.

Somehow I kept the scream contained, probably by way of my jaw being clenched so tightly I heard my back teeth grinding faintly.

When it at length faded away I opened my eyes and looked down with a sharp intake of breath to see my skin was fully healed - no trace of blemish or burn mark was left behind on it except for the same sigil baring Lasciel's name in a faint outline.

Slowly my other hand reached out to trace the design, and another stab of misery erupted from my injured shoulder, but I was able to keep my wits enough to look down and pry my shirt aside to watch and listen in slight disbelief as marrow _regenerated_ and filled in the gaping hole between bone. In moments, the _crack_ of each damaged section setting itself proper again followed, and torn muscle began to pulsate as blood flowed along and stretched out to wrap over the white beneath it. The black edges that had started to decay paled and lightened again before creeping up and meeting in the middle as a whole.

Staring at the display I couldn't help but be impressed, and scared.

That kind of healing should have taken me years of natural recovery, and instead it had been cleaned up as though nothing had ever occurred in the course of a minute and a half. Somewhere in the back of my mind I felt a fleeting sense of _satisfaction_ before it was gone again and I was interrupted from those concerns by a pair of hands slowing clapping.

Instantly I became aware of the surroundings again and all the noise therein, sitting in the formerly-empty throne to Ferrovax's right at that table.

To his left the position of _Serenthrax_ was still without the elder Dragon to it, though several other lesser seats had been gathered around us and filled with fewer successfully-disguised, lowgrade-dragons, and farther away a raised trow had been settled into place with more Wyverns' resting on either side impatiently.

Ferrovax spoke with a firm tone even as his eyes turned to meet mine.

"As I was saying. Welcome to our Domain the Wizard Dresden, who has agreed per choice of seat to fill in for our third greatest member's absence, and in honor of finally stepping out from the bitter grasp of the Fae, let us applaud his presence."

I felt the weight of his being come down on me like an increase in planetary gravity, but unlike the last few times I was able to let my shoulders sag and brace my hands along the throne's armrests and my feet flat against the floor to carry it.

His lips curled upward in imitation of a smile along the edges as a wary clapping came from the dragons nearest, and the Wyverns' hissed entirely in their own tongue, something meant to insult, of what I recognized among the tone and pitch.

When that died down he focused a little more clearly on me and I could feel my back muscles straining to keep upright, but clenching my teeth together I was able to ground out the words, "_Thank you_," tightly as the sigil on my hand grew more defined.

He nodded his head in satisfaction and turned back to the others, withdrawing half of the weight baring down on me enough that I could lean back against the chair tautly.

_What did I just get myself into?_

* * *

Chapter Four concluded. 


	5. Chapter 5: Dinner and a tale

Time passed wearily at the table as Ferrovax started up a conversation with each of the lesser dragons, gathering what information they had been able to accumulate on their own tasks since the last meeting with him. I learned Names, Places, and tentative-theories on why such things were occurring by said beings in those same places. The whole time my spine was pushed up against the back of the chair and I tried not to acknowledge the slow scream rising up from each muscle surrounding it.

He finally brought his hands together again, once with a ringing echo that carried all the way across the hall and brought the other sounds to an instantaneous halt.

"With such matters concluded we may accede to our hunger at last," he declared in the following silence, and waited. I'll admit that my own stomach rumbled weakly with hunger, but it tensed up and my hunger was forgotten when I saw exactly what they were planning to consume that night.

The body of the Wyvern I had killed earlier was carried forward in the left hand of the first Dragon - _Serenthrax_, my alter Id supplied - held aloft over the head like a prize of war, and clenched in his other was something resembling raw-boar.

The boar was thrown into the trow without a glance, and immediately the nearest pair of Wyverns' lunged for it with their strong wings accelerating the motions, driving into and jockeying with each other to claim the slab for itself . In moments the others entered the fray and began to snap and whip at the rest with their barbed tail-tips. A moment later the boar hit the trowel and they all turned upon it like a pack of hyenas. Fresh blood and strips of flesh were torn off of the bone furiously.

The sight of it was utterly sickening.

Ferrovax inclined his head once Serenthrax stopped near his seat and slammed the roasted Wyvern down heavily. The latter looked directly at me as he drew his blade and proceeded to slice and skewer steak-sized sections of the creature with a mastered ease, and I took the hint -_ and_ _threat_ - he was giving quite clearly, silently adding a note to part him from that weapon if we ever met alone in a dark corridor down the road.

Old and weakened as he was, the full might of a Dragon in its natural being was not something I wanted to scoff at.

After dishing out multiple pieces to each member at the table he stabbed his scimitar down upon a trio of steaks and hefted it into the air before he turned and Flew off again - I had the feeling my position at the high table, filling in that empty seat, had offended him something fierce. The lesser dragons seemed uneasy with me as well, I noticed, but they appeared more hesitant to say anything with Ferrovax still nearby. Sparing glances took me in and hastened to look away again as they ripped into the meat only slightly less voraciously as the Wyverns.

I just stared back in disgust and looked at the charred meat in front of me with a flat look.

"I'm not eating this," I muttered quietly, and one hand snaked out to tear the top piece away the moment the words were past my lips. I blinked in surprise and watched as the dragon responsible for the theft ripped the steak down the middle before shoveling the first piece down his gullet. The other half he reluctantly handed to the creature next to him, who repeated the gesture and passed on the quarter left over to the next beside him. Despite the way they were going at the food it slowly dawned on me just how _gaunt_ the faces of them each were when they turned to look at my remaining two steaks seconds later, half a dozen angled eyes searching for something in my expression.

_Starving dragons?_ I thought in disbelief.

"Either partake in the sacrificial meal like the rest of our kind, Wizard Dresden, or give it up entirely. Stop taunting them," Ferrovax told me in a deceptively soft tone, and I glanced over to see him slicing his own food apart with a small dagger and fork, spear a piece on the tip of the blade, and raise it up to his mouth slowly.

My own stomach rumbled painfully and I grimaced further.

Thankfully there was no smell wafting up from the meat, but just the gray-brown look to it offsetting enough to keep me from trying too hard at catching a whiff. Reluctantly, forcing my arms to move through the pressure railing against me, I raised one steak up to my lips and bit off as small a chunk as I could before throwing the rest toward the middle of the table, chewing the ridiculously tangy and tough morsel quickly with my eyes closed.

It truly wasn't half bad. My gut stopped whining as soon as I swallowed it down, and somehow that tiny scrap left me feeling just a bit like I had knocked back a regular meal. A bit of strength returned to my limbs and I could bear both Ferrovax's presence and the environment more... comfortably. Almost as if I was becoming accustomed to it, or it to me.

That said, I just couldn't enjoy eating something with an intelligence to match my own, that I had personally had a hand in killing, and had had the pleasure of watching get torn apart quickly and horrifically. I slowly opened my eyes back up once the sounds of ripping, shredding, and swallowing had quieted down entirely.

I shouldn't have. I caught sight of the dragons licking the remaining blood off of their fingers, the plates, and even the table itself just to get up that last scrap of protein. _Stars and Stones, _I thought grimly. As if sensing my disgust and finally choosing to acknowledge it, Ferrovax sent the lesser dragons and Wyverns back to their respective places.

Then he turned to me and stood up.

"Come, Wizard Dresden. The time is near that you were meant to depart our realm," he intoned neutrally and waited for me to rise.

So far I had held out under his presence well enough, and I wanted some damn answers before he threw me out - so far I had only learned that Oberon had been wearing my skull like a meat puppet and banging out orders to fight his old foes. At least I had been relinquished from that psychological control, but in a very short period of time I would be under Lasciel's thumb instead. I had just traded one immediate threat for an imminent one.

Even the assorted bits and pieces of knowledge I had picked up from the discussions here didn't exactly help.

"Maybe later," I told him quietly, reeling in the urge to collapse. My body could only put up with so much, and even with the bite of Wyvern meat in due processing, I couldn't hold up forever.

He arched both eyebrows slowly at my refusal.

"What makes you think there is anything left for you here, I wonder," he said aloud in a open-ended statement, and I frowned.

If this escalated to violence, I _really_ did not want to get caught without my staff. I remembered glimpsing it when I turned to look at my shoulder healing, and looking aside I saw it still leaning there precariously. _Well, that settles that._ Slowly pushing to my feet, one arm gripping the back of the throne not to keel over, I grabbed my staff and brought it around between myself and the Dragon, planted it firmly, and spoke up.

"I'm in no mood to try and argue with you, Ferrovax, but the fact of the matter is that I haven't learned anything that would help me put Oberon back in the ground." I said.

Ferrovax stared at me for a long few seconds before nodding his head once.

"Come, then. follow me to a point of particular significance on your journey, Wizard Dresden," he intoned dryly.

* * *

We traversed through dim halls much like the dungeon I had woken up in, a nice thirty foot gap once again separating the two of us so that I could at least stride with wanting to drop dead in the process. The farther we went, the quieter it grew, until I could hear the echo of his own long exhalations reaching back to my ears.

"I am told you learned of Oberon from the word of Mab," he finally said in a soft tone I had no trouble catching. "Her tale of him is likely flawed, the information passed-on second-hand from Mother Winter herself. I recall the child-Mab in the intermittent years of negotiation between our realm and Faerie following his sealing, a girl too young to have seen her King dethroned that day." His voice seemed to burn the very air as opposed to chilling it as Mab had when she spoke, and sweat gathered along the walls we passed and oozed down in crimson rivulets. I hastened my step to diminish the distance despite bringing me closer to the Dragon - the more I learned of this realm, the less time I wanted to spend within it.

He glanced back a moment, judging my reaction, and then continued, "The Queens of the Sidhe Courts are comparable to many of the stronger forces in the Nevernever when they put aside their differences and work together, Wizard Dresden, and so they have earned their position and renown in Oberon's wake, but their singular King is the pinnacle of their race, a young upstart with the strength to back up his intrusion among the highest tiers." The smoke filling the air as he exhaled gathered along the ceiling and kept apace with us. "I speak from personal experience. Even after being imprisoned in a place where the conditions are _unendurable_, where his magic is siphoned and splintered to the four-cardinal axis-points and bled across the world above, where his very _blood_ is poisoned with every day that goes by, the Sidhe King has managed to survive."

"In truth I have my suspicions over who has released him from that place, but that will come in due time. On that morn ten thousand and sixteen years prior, he stood against the gathered Dragons and _lived_ through our retribution for daring to assault our lands, _relished_ in the release of wild-flame and element cascading against his flesh. It is only during his spell to dissolve our kind that Oberon was overcome and thrown down." His voice began to take on a more potent note with each word he said. "Sixteen Dragons stood at my side that morn, Wizard Dresden, and only three of us walked away in the aftermath."

At last he turned to face me at the end of the hall and I could suddenly _feel_ the emotion resting beneath his tone, I could see the pillars of anguish and fury equally entwined within his eyes, and suddenly I knew without a doubt that he longed for Oberon's demise more so than Mab ever could. The temperature around us was almost searing in intensity, and a light red haze emanated from his nostrils instead of the plain gray smoke. I smelled ash and what I thought might have been brimstone, the internal fire within his body rising with intensity. What he was doing was a deliberate expression of his being.

"No Dragon has been reborn among our kind since that battle was interrupted, no matter what odds we go to in the effort to revitalize their spirit once more. Either the usurper King is truly eradicated and his magic is erased, or my species will never again repopulate this Domain." Turning away he pushed open a door I hadn't seen in the faint lighting and haze, and then he had Flown forward and placed a hand upon the arm with Lasciel's sigil flickering below.

"I suspect exactly who it was that encouraged Oberon to quest beyond his rightful vistas in Faerie, but I can point you only toward guesses at who has released him yet again... seek out Loki. And finish what should have been one hundred centuries ago."

Every word he spoke fought to destroy my very being beneath the sudden, overwhelming presence, but then he had Flown me forward and released, leaving a faint burning imprint in my skin that throbbed, and I was falling through the open door back into the Nevernever.

* * *

Chapter Five concluded.


	6. Chapter 6: Welcome to the land of Jotunn

I tumbled for a time like that, just free falling through a bizarrely lit and steadily cooling flume with a pale end in the distance. Ferrovax's parting grip continued to burn painfully for most of the fall, until the chill breeze whipping past and the faint hum of energy associated with the Dragon's Domain faded away to be replaced by the howl of a frozen tundra. The mark slowed its throb and gradually vanished, just in time for me to finally realize how close I was to a fatal impact below. Darkness predominated the whistling-wind filled drop, but a sudden glint of faint blue-white spear-tips appeared less than three hundred feet below.

Throwing my staff forward with a rush of hastily summoned will, I shrieked out, "_Veni che__!_" in time to blunt the majority of the free-fall, the levitation spell catching my shoulders and the back of my belt in time to slam me face-first and spread-eagled into the foot-deep soft powder below.

Still lacking my duster, as I would realize in the next few moments.

I snapped to attention and stumbled over my own feet trying to shake loose all the icy particles that were suddenly frosting my face in a good likeness of five o'clock shadow and coating my upper lip in the mockery of a mustache, slate white eyebrows running down to my ears in the process. The rest of it ran down my admittedly thin t-shirt and further into my pants.

"Stars and stones! Get out of there!"

Shaking loose what I could of the frosty particles and once more embarrassing myself for the amusement of the fates', I managed to clear the majority of it off and call up a small flame to see by with a command of, "_Flickum Bicus!_"

I swallowed somewhat thickly a moment later at the four-foot-thick javelin of ice sticking up right beside where my face had landed - and Denarian-level recovery powers or not, getting impaled on _that_ would have obliterated any chance I had to return as a living Wizard. Panning my vision further around, I saw half a dozen more scattered around, most of them far enough away not to be a cause for worry. Even still I had skirted death by inches.

I carefully stepped around the nearest stalagmite and bent down to pick up my staff, examining the aged wood for signs of cracking before releasing a sign of relief that it was unharmed. Then I turned toward the mouth of this cave-flume and ignored the increased gusts of wind to get a better look at where in the Nevernever I had landed. A few twinkling stars dotted the midnight-blue sky overhead, but no moon was visible here and the majority of the land was coated in shadows. I could just make out the rise of the coast in the distance and a few other sharp points that were probably mountains of a kind, and the unnaturally cold breezes rolling in over the snow-tinged slopes at first told me this was perhaps some part of Mab's land.

Then I felt the ground tremble beneath my feet, and a low and drawn out groan of earth crumbling and jostling against itself.

"This isn't going to end well," I muttered warily, turning my body halfway back in the direction I had landed as I pushed the flame forward and saw a figure rising.

And rising.

And further still until it drew the stalagmite from the ground as the end of some sort of demented warhammer, the stone and leather covered hilt gripped in burly blue fingers. Sluggish words tripped over a thick tongue and blue-tinged lips as one massive hand reached up to knock compacted snow out of each thick ear, and I simply stood there gaping like a lark.

"_Hva er du_, _lille Midgardian_?" it spoke. I grimaced.

"Uh..." unsure what it had said, Ferrovax's words came back to my mind rather quickly, and I ruled out the chance of this being any part of _Faerie_.

He had shoved me into one of the nine _Norse _realms.

I didn't need Bob on hand to tell me what I was looking at, then, as the information steadily built up. A frost giant, or Jotunn, which has many similarities to a Summer Troll - namely in size and the power that usually comes with the territory of muscles the size of small boulders. I suspected they were resistant to magic of one kind or another, but that said, what research I had done after learning Donar Vadderung was actually Odin, and that Marcone had a true Valkyrie on his payroll, had trailed off in the wake of more pressing issues. I had meant to pick it back up, but I just hadn't had the time lately.

It reached around to shake snow out of its other ear before peering down at me more closely, pale-gray eyes murky with tiredness and a hint of surprise. It didn't look stupid or particularly aggressive, but rather like an apprenticing mason had tried to chisel a glacier down to humanoid shape and simply lost track of his reference guide mid-way through. The eyesockets were a little too large and spaced apart from each other on the brow, the cheekbones too elongated, and the chin too jutting. White, furry leather worked over its body in a dozen different straps, holding the rough outfit it wore in place, but not a single natural hair decorated its form.

I took a step back when it lunged forward and wrapped sausage-link fingers around my own hand that was holding the spell active, and before I knew it my toes were scraping the snow as the Jotunn examined the dancing light before its eyes curiously.

"_Du er ikke en vanlig Midgardian_. _Hva er dette_?" It said, breath equally as cold as the rest of this place and nearly freezing the spell out of the air in the process. I couldn't make a lick of sense from that and decided that I wasn't going to risk losing a limb for it.

I directed my other hand around to point at its wrist and then released the pent up energy in the rings with a hasty, "_Forzare!_"

The Jotunn's hand snapped open almost immediately, slinging me away on reflex. That's the thing about certain creatures in and from the Nevernever that most Wizards tend to underestimate - a joint is still a joint, most of the time. Hit that joint with enough force at the right angle and all the other joints attached from that point forward will release their hold. This guy happened to fall into the 'Near-humanoid skeleton - just bigger!' category.

Droplets of thick, semi-gelatinous gray blood ran down from pock-mocks left behind by the force of my spell, and the frost giant's expression faded from curiosity to flat anger. He stepped forward with a disgusted sound and slapped me upside the head from where I had landed on my back and hastily scrambled to a crouched position. I was just about to reach my feet when the blow struck, glancing off of my chin and snapping my head upright. I must have soared near to twenty feet before dropping down into a deep snowbank, rolling to a stop against a small hill below.

Tingling ran along my spine and raced up my neck while I laid there like the ragdoll I had temporarily become, wondering at my luck not to have been ripped apart from the impact. Darkness edged over my gaze as the frost giant thundered down from the flume entrance, shaking the earth with his every step.

That sort-of itch finally resolved itself in time for me to shake off the dizziness. I pushed to my feet a little sloppily and recovered my staff from nearby with a hasty "_Ventas Servitas!_" and then hastened to gather my will together, readying something with a stronger kick to it should the Jotunn continue forward. It slowed down when it saw my ready if somewhat unsteady stance, hefting the warhammer half-heartedly.

"Elendige Midgardian." With that oath the Jotunn spared me an ill look and marched off in another direction, seemingly giving me no further mind.

"_Huh._" I exhaled with a winch at the residual pain in my bones, watching it retreat and raising a hand to rub at my aching head. "That... could have been a hell of a lot worse than it was." I rolled the shoulder of the arm he had gripped and tested the muscle for injury, then repeated the effort here and there, stretching the rest of my body to make sure I wasn't injured worse than I thought. "Maybe they aren't entirely as much like Troll's as I had thought." It was certainly possible. If I hadn't struck first, it might have been content let me be after a time.

I shook my head. I didn't have the luxury to assume anything, anymore, until Oberon was dealt with.

Giving it another few moments to insure there wasn't about to be a sudden bull-rush from the distant frost giant, I turned away and began to work along the slope toward the mountains in the distance.

Above and behind my head a dull brown raven about the size of an eagle shook off ice from its stony perch and took flight after me.

I paid it no mind at this point in the journey.

* * *

Despite the lack of clothing and the intensive chill about the land, I never grew too cold, and my thoughts felt less fatigued all and all than I could remember happening for... months, easily. Maybe even a year or better.

I began to attribute that to Lasciel's influence and tried to keep track of how much time had passed since calling her coin to hand. It seemed to be about three and half very-precious hours, as I trekked up and down along the Jotunnheim traversing through unending banks of snow.

I eventually reached a spanning river twice as long as the Jotunn I last met had been tall, when was the one back at the flume. They shouldn't have been so far and few between, unless there was something afoul of late. Perhaps the mutterings about 'Midgardians' meant they had taken to hunting down the frost giants. I simply didn't know. The odds of it being something more unpleasant crept up from the back of my mind.

What if whoever was responsible for all of this, the Black Council in all probability, truly _was _predicting my motions? Could they be setting up traps with enough surety and accuracy to kill me now that I had accepted Lasciel's coin? And for that matter, I still didn't know how much longer until Oberon returned to full strength - but if I felt like being frank, I found that his imminent return to godling-hood didn't matter as much as finding and doing _something_ about him before my own internal meltdown was averted.

I didn't have time to stop and try to consider either unsavory situation.

I came to a stop several feet back from the water, watching as the churn of the river whipped up a vicious somersault of waves that crashed back to the surface like liquid hammers. There was simply no way I'd be able to cross that and not get swept up into the furious assault, but I'd faced similar conundrum's and found some way to get through it before. Just as I remembered a spell that might work I heard the raven's caw, and looking up toward that direction I watched as the scale-covered feathers of each wing glided smoothly over the massive surface, and it landed on the other side and turned the head back to observe me.

"Right." I said with a general sense of unease. "Now I'm being eyeballed by a stone-and-scale-covered avian with only one eye left to it." As the words tumbled out of my mouth I recognized why that should sound familiar, and a temporary sense of relief followed - perhaps I wasn't as shafted as I had initially thought, between Ferrovax and Odin having their attention on the situation as well.

"So you're one of Donar's pets?" I asked, and the raven cocked the head down and toward one side a fraction as if to answer. "Good to know he's still out there watching things; I could use the help." I said before stepping forward to plant my staff firmly at the very edge of the river, so that a few inches of water soaked the base of the wood, then began to breath in and out deeply in preparation for the evocation about to be worked. My eyes closed, trusting the raven to caw again in warning if anything approached that I should be worried about, and then I gathered in my will to feed down into the staff.

Unknown to my senses, the wood began to release little wisps of curling smoke as the sigils along it stood at attention in magnificent contrast, and the representation of Laciel's name on my hand came to life to match.

I barely felt a delicate-presence touch my conscious mind before my eyes snapped open and I released my will into being with a hearty cry of, "_Gravitus_!" and then the churn of the river was quelled beneath the rush of amplified gravity.

* * *

Chapter Six concluded.

_Translations_:

"Hva er du, lille Midgardian?" What are you, little Midgardian?

"Du er ikke en vanlig Midling. Hva er dette?" You are not a common Midgardian. What's this?

"Elendige midgardian." Miserable Midgardian.


	7. Chapter 7: Losing oneself to a coin

As the words left my mouth, I was already gathering the shape in my mind, giving rise to a shallow and low-set block of condensed pressure and weight. The load of solid gravity crushed down the tumbling river before it, and the sudden obstruction in the way forced the rushing water to divert around to the sides. Some of it sloshed up onto the land to soak my ankles while the rest was pushed only further into the harsh current toward my destination.

With care I took my first few steps around the object so as not to be dragged down under the effect of my own spell, and within moments I was walking somewhat angular across the exposed and muddy river bed. Once I neared the end of the block I pushed my staff forward with a grunt and directed the concentrated spell another few feet ahead.

Among all the heavy-hitter spells I had access to, I'd place this one only just beneath the one that I had pulled with that ley line back at Chichén Itzá as being more will-and-stamina intensive. Just the the effort to cast it and keep the thing active was putting me in a wearier state, and getting it all the way across the river proved that this was definitely one of my more foolish choices to indulge in. Each time I had to push the block ahead it resisted more than it had prior, and I had to exert more physical force to shove it along. The raging water rushed around the back and front and almost stole away my footing more than once. If I didn't have my staff for support I'd have been swept away and probably drowned - which would have been a fitting finality to my career as a Wizard, wouldn't it?

_T__his is taking way too much out of my already woefully neglected physical stamina_, I thought, putting the thought of my open grave at Graceland Cemetery aside, and I _oomphed_ and _aahed_ and did my best to imitate a pissed off Wookiee over the next ten minutes to get the damnable thing across the riverbed.

The moment my toes touched down on the shallow bank on the opposite side, I tore my staff free and collapsed to one knee then and there, feeling the harried and wild rush of the water carry on only a scant few inches behind my back as it surged back to life unimpeded. I leaned my head down into my chest to catch my breath, and I finally felt how much sweat had gathered along my brow and soaked into the shirt during the tense few minutes there, enduring the ache and fatigue in my upper arms. My entire upper body was soaked despite the freezing chill in the air, and that served as a steady reminder that despite having Lasciel's coin to up my magical reserves, I was still only human, and physical fatigue was definitely not out of my list of things to woe over just yet.

The raven watched me in silence while I sat there resting until at last it stretched its wings and took flight again, circling overhead and cawing once more before swerving off into the hills ahead.

_Fifteen hours left._

Where the thought came from I didn't know, but I was suddenly aware that out of the original seventy-two Mab had warned me of, less than a quarter remained.

I straightened up sharply at the sobering thought.

"Hell's bells, give me a fucking break already! I'm doing everything I can!" I shouted at the sky in frustration, leaning into the staff and rising back to my feet painfully.

_No, I refuse to submit like this. I've had worse time limits before and managed to twist the odds; think, dammit, think!_

As I struggled with the returning panic from those first few minutes, I forced myself to stop and take a series of long, slow breaths, looking again upon the well of memories that I had taken strength from before, until a tendril of calm had reared its head and allowed me to collect my wits again.

"Just follow the raven. And hope to Odin that it knows a quick route down into the routes of Yggdrasil."

* * *

Half an hour later, and I finally emerged from the hills of this frigid domain and was crossing the only bridge leading into Midgard, facing down a blond-bearded man who looked none too thrilled to see me wandering in from the dark. That lasted about as long as it took for the raven to soar by my left shoulder before gliding upward and coming back around in a neat arc to land there suddenly, and the man's expression became one of confusion instead.

"_Odin er det deg_? _Jeg visste ikke at du hadde kommet tilbake til vårt land,_" he said slowly. "_Er din debatt med Thor løst_?"

I had no clue what he just asked me, which represented a new problem; how the hell was I supposed to do anything about Loki, to question him, if I couldn't understand a word that was said to me here?

"Uh..." looking at the raven as if it could somehow help, I glanced back at the man and pointed with my staff toward the gateway behind him, then at myself, hoping to somehow convey what I wanted without speaking.

His features grew cold.

_Oh_, _great_.

"_Jeg trodde det var usansynnelig_. _Du må være gal jotne, hvis du tør å etterligne hans kjæredyr_?" he rattled off slowly and with a rising incredulity. I caught maybe one word of his point and began to gather the energy to blow him aside. "_Brødre_, _til meg_!" with a shout he drew a very unpleasant-looking, imposing ten-pound hammer and rushed forward with furious stomps.

"_Ventas Servitas_!" I shouted in return.

The wind rushed forward to scoop him up... and did absolutely nothing as he powered on through it.

_Hell's bells. He must have had some kind of magic-resistant amulet or runes on his person somewhere_.

I dove out the way of his under-handed swipe with the large silver hammer and rolled a few times before scrambling off in the direction he had come from - there was no point in fighting him if I could just get to the gate. He corrected my foolish thinking by slinging the hammer at my head and managed to connect instead to a shoulder. I yelped as it rocked me forward like an avalanche crashing down on my back, barely holding my feet and stumbling forward in time to see two others just like him slip out from behind the large gate ahead.

_Just what is it with everyone targeting my arms lately?_ I swallowed dryly and blocked out the pain sweeping through my numbed limb.

"_Ventas Servitas_!" I shouted again, only this time I used it to throw _myself_ out of the way of their paths. I was swept up and hurtled back toward the hills and the start of the bridge for the moment and managed to stumble to a moderately successful landing without falling flat on my face for the second time in as many moments.

They eyed me with varying states of distress for a few moments and paused in their march, allowing me time to recover - already the pain was leeching away, and I could bend my fingers without them tingling like crazy. The raven somehow remained stationary on my shoulder the whole while, to boot.

The one who was in charge shook off his surprise or wariness at the aerial maneuver and came at me again with another cry, and the two behind him were stirred from their own lull to repeat it and give chase, and I found I could recognize another few bits and pieces of their shouts.

My anger at the situation and the suppressed fear of the diminishing schedule pushed to the surface before I could wrangle it under control, and in hindsight it would have been smarter to have just blown the gate off it's damn hinges, but I felt a new kind of fury rising up that was unreasonable and irrational toward the gatesmen.

"Alright you sorry bastards, enough is enough!"

I brought my staff to my good hand and focused on who seemed to be the leader of the pack, and with as much anger as I could impart given the general fatigue on the back of my attention span and the flat ache in my back, I shouted out "_Fuego_!"

I came to a dead halt at what my spell had unleashed. A moment later my anger vanished as if it had never been.

The usual swarm of fire burst into life with the tang of sulfur sweeping through the air, but the color was like nothing I had seen before, the flames layered in such a way that the innermost ball of condensed, vibrant purple was wrapped in spirals of blue and white, surging and streaming just as viciously as the river I had crossed a short while earlier and raging back and forth across the surface as the air before it screamed.

The Midgardian had no idea what was about to happen and I regretted casting the spell immediately. I felt Lasciel's presence glide against my conscious thought, delivering a satisfied hiss and hanging around just long enough to make sure I was aware how close she was to taking over.

And then the spell hit.

His heavy-set features were caught in a frown as the silver hammer grasped in one hand came around to crash into it. His upper features sloughed off the bone beneath in the detonation and sudden expansion of burning heat to drip down to the bridge thickly, oozing free and reducing the metal to less than ash where it made contact.

The sheer gruesome nature of the act floored the two backup men and I felt my stomach knot up with sickness. Without even meaning to do it I had killed him, had taken the life of another human being through magic. It left a repulsive taint behind that I hadn't felt before, not when I killed Justin DuMorne, or Victor Sells. This wasn't justifiable - I had had alternative measures at hand, different routes to peruse if I had truly stopped a few seconds to think about them.

When the council found out what I had done, I was as good as dead, not to mention what these people would do, and right about then, I wasn't sure that I would try to stop them. I couldn't even form the words to speak even if I had wanted to. The two men ahead seemed to recover after a few more moments of horrified silence, and each released a blood-curdling howl of righteous fury before doing something completely unexpected compared to how these situations usually concluded- they fled.

For once in my lifetime, the other guy took note of my ability to reduce them to a pile of burning sulfur and accepted their likelihood of ending up as such, and went hauling off away to avoid such a fate. A part of me was desperately relieved that I didn't have to try and stop them now, since I doubted I could without causing way more damage than I wanted to. I knew my blasting rod was usually utilized to control my output level, but hell's bells, this was something that shouldn't have happened even with just the staff for control, and I knew that Lasciel had manipulated me into relinquishing even that much - she had deliberately weaved in Hellfire to bolster my intentions.

No, it was far better for them to run and let me escape than to do something stupid and reckless, and if I had the option I'd be more than happy to go back and stop myself from using any spell against the last guy as well. I swallowed my revulsion and bile as the raven cawed once more, and I suddenly had the answer waiting right there in my head for where I had to go to next, once I was past the gate and away from the murder.

Grimacing, we slipped through into the entry halls of Midgard right on the heels of the fleeing gatesmen, but we wouldn't be staying. The dungeon beneath the central tower ahead would carry us the rest of the way down to the roots of Yggdrasil, and I had little intention to hang around for longer than needed.

* * *

It turns out that I was wrong.

The gatesmen didn't flee to save their skins, but rather they ran to get their boss. I found him blocking my path when a huge boulder crashed down a handful of inches from my nose. "_Who dares murder the men of this realm so callously_?" his voice was thick and muddy sounding, but at least it was translated into the nearest equivalent of something I could recognize. I turned toward it and leaned up against the boulder with tenseness showing in my features and posture.

"I swear to you, I didn't intend to kill him. The spell should have burned him enough to leave me alone, and for that I am truly sorry. But I don't have time to stop and pay any proper respects toward him or his people, and time is running out for me as it is." I told him carefully.

His teeth ground together unpleasantly. "_No excuse you have is good enough to leave his corpse resting undefended on the edges of the Jotunnheim,_" he returned.

My temper flared for a moment, and I forced it back down just as quickly, refusing to be used by Lasciel once again. It was strangely easier than resisting Oberon's will had been, now that I was aware of it. Even if she wasn't there, however, getting into another battle here and now would just delay me even further.

"Does the name Oberon mean anything to you people?" I shot at him.

He blinked but masked any other reaction, leveling his hammer at my head, and I wondered for a moment when they started carrying hammers around so often. "_You will return and pay for both his murder and trespassing within this sacred Tower toward the lower realms,_" he declared firmly.

"I have less than fifteen hours until the Sidhe King Oberon is resurrected in full. I'm not one of your people, be they Midgardian, Asgardian, or Jotunn!" I tried a different tactic to little avail. He seemed to be blocking me out and it was just as well, since I doubted we had anything more to say.

I ducked as he threw the hammer and it crushed the boulder at my back into so much rubble and tiny stones, dozens of wicked slivers and shrapnel driving into my back. Getting showered in dust as well as being stabbed with shards of sharp and pointy rock both distracted and reminded me that despite his appearance, this idiot was stronger than he looked.

_And so am I._

I coughed to get my lungs clear and dodged to the side when he lunged forward, one hand stabbing forward and scrapping along the surface of the ground hard enough to leave an indention behind. But I noticed his hand bled a little where it had made contact. So they _weren't _entirely superhuman in every way.

Then he rotated on the ball of his foot and slugged me upside the head, and I was sent soaring a good dozen feet away, disabusing me of that notion and planting a new one in its place; the humans of earth were the equivalent of children compared to those of the Nordic realms.

"Hell's bells, what are they feeding you people?" I sputtered through the ringing in my ears. It wasn't quite as bad as what the Jotunn had done, for one being I was still able to see and nothing had broken, but still. I couldn't let myself be sidelined like this if I wanted to prevent the death and destruction of countless others. I rolled over and pointed my staff at the charging Midgardian, and unsure why, I fell back upon my usual wind spell instead of anything worse. "_V__entas Servitas!_" I shouted in the vain hope that he wouldn't be under the same defense's as his friends.

The gale-force rush of winds stirred to life and picked him up like a tiny fishing vessel caught in a thunderstorm at sea, tossing the large man backwards through the air and out through the opening into the tower. I didn't let my conscience be concerned over his soon to be rough landing, given what I had observed of him so far. At least he looked like the type that wouldn't take as much damage, and unlike before, I made sure to keep full reign on my intention and direction.

The raven, who had been smart enough to take flight when it saw him lunge for me, returned to a shoulder and sat down once more with a pointed look. "I know. But we're on a time limit. I'll send him flowers or something if he winds up in a hospital." I managed to state evenly. A flash of the dead gatesman's burning face dried up any humor I had left.

The raven stayed silent and turned to face the original path we were on, and I pushed up to my feet and returned to it as well.

* * *

The descent into the base of Yggdrasil and the passage through to the bottom-most realm took less time than I was expecting to spend on it. The passageway began to decline and angle toward a sharp downward point as it grew narrower from the sides, and eventually my fingers were pressed to the edges just to keep the sense of vertigo under control.

The whole while my thoughts ran back and forth over killing the Midgardian and then brushing it off so casually when I faced his boss, trying to come to grips with the emotional instability being caused by Lasciel's mental crusade against Lash and my alter Id.

I could feel the fallen angel's presence for longer and longer flickers of a second as if taunting me, and it was quickly reaching the point that I knew I couldn't just stand around and wait any longer. If she killed them or otherwise took control than the game was up. Giving up the coin after that would be almost impossible and she could see every move I would make before I consciously chose to make it.

I absolutely _could not _allow that to happen.

The sloping path grew a little flatter after fifteen more minutes of travel and it was at that point that I stopped and sat down on my knees. "I've finally put together which one you are, and if I'm right, your help could really be appreciated in the next few minutes," I told the raven quietly.

It turned the head to look at me with the good eye and cawed, and again I felt a surge of memory come to the forefront of my mind, seeing my mothers jewel of the passageways through the Nevernever. _Hell's bells, Dresden, how did you forget about that? This could have been over so much sooner with the right path!_ I shouted inside my own head with not so much shock as frustration at so many hours wasted.

Even still, if I hadn't come to Rashid, and been directed to face Ferrovax, I might still be under Oberon's control. This_ was_ the right path so far despite my mistakes. It was difficult, but again I shoved the wilder emotions back under control.

"Thanks, but that wasn't what I meant. I'm sure your master will recognize what I'm about to say, and if he's listening, than I ask both of you to give me some support here; Ferrovax purified me of Mab and Lea's binds. I'm free from the Sidhe once more. He bleached my soul clean of their magic and influence, and as a result so much of the accumulated power I had from their bargains was taken away." Pausing a moment to breath a sharp sigh, I raised the hand the sigil had formed on. "My subconsciousness finally met up with me while I was out of things and convinced me to take up the Fallen's coin, and while I know it was stupid and foolish, I _needed _that kind of power to have any chance against Oberon in the hours to come. My point here is that she's winning inside of my head - he won't survive much longer without my support, and I can feel her presence tainting my mind more and more," I told the raven, and hoped that Donar was on the other end.

"I have to try and help him out while there's still a chance to survive. All I ask of you is to keep on cawing, keep on reminding me and him of who we are and what we've done. If she manages to take us under her control that should help to jog us loose. _Please_." I finished with a begging note to my tone.

For a long minute the raven was silent, and then a voice I did not expect to hear again spoke up.

"_You will have it. Ten minutes, Harry Dresden._" The voice-box it had to work through distorted and bent the words, but the actual tone was definitely that of Vadderung's, and the raven swallowed roughly afterward.

"Thank you." I told him sincerely, and then setting the tip of my staff to the stone floor, I began to burn a thin circle around my kneeling form, pausing only long enough to gather my will and solidify my thoughts, then completing it on my outward breath.

A faint hum filled the air and I closed my eyes again, searching for the calmness of thought and mind to retreat from consciousness...

* * *

...and opened my eyes to a battlefield.

Laciel's spidery, tendril lined and disturbingly graceful body danced across the open air as a band of thick gold fluid was expelled from fangs emerging out of one wrist. It hit an thin oval shield with a rush of concentric silver motes and the scent of sulfur before dropping to the floor uselessly.

Behind a barrier of upraised white marble stone stood my alter Id with a furious scowl etched into his features and the left arm completely coated in what was probably more of that fluid. Lash was on what counted as her knees and bound from the end of the stumps to her throat. "Ah... my host... why?" she murmured slowly as if in confusion.

He spun around when he heard that and I realized at about the same time that they did that I was in the middle of open territory. "_Dresden!_" Lasciel's muffled, harmonious and throaty voice practically screamed in a mixture of delight and raw orgasmic bliss. I scrambled to my hands and feet and made a mad dash for the marble barrier my subconscious was behind.

She was swifter.

Dropping from the air she landed on six narrow pointed legs and galloped toward me not unlike the members of the Black Court were used to scurrying around, and in roughly an instant I felt the not so subtle pain of two of those legs pinning me to the floor. The arm with the fangs in it reached around to grip my throat tightly as she looked up at him, four-some of eyes shining with victory.

"_Move and he dies,_" she warned him; I had no choice to move the way her weight and other limbs settled to hold me still.

"Dammit Dresden!" he yelled at me. I had to agree. What a stupid move to just sit there and watch instead of trying to get into the fray or get the hell _out of it_ and toward safety.

With a shudder I felt her warm breath ghost across the back of my neck around the fingers of her hand and then something hot and sticky began to coat the front side of my throat. It weighed an incredible amount and I found it almost impossible to keep my head craned back and up to look around at him, sagging into her rough embrace.

"_So foolish, Wizard. You have seen what becomes of those that surrender to our kind. I never expected you to come forward without first facing the Fae king, _" Lasciel intoned in mocking delight. Two of her eyes stared down at me as the other two remained locked on him, and the expression of bitter anger and defeat did not look entirely pleasant. I couldn't physically answer her as every breath became a labor with the gold weighing it down.

Somewhere far away a raven cawed.

Above me Lasciel's head twitched and I felt a drip of saliva roll down into my hair. It steamed and dissolved slowly. _"Who did you bring with you, Harry?_" her tone was not even condescending this time as when she was speaking just moments ago... _but was she even condescending earlier? _I questioned silently.

Whatever it had been, her voice was soft and melodious now. "_Who?_" she repeated.

The same caw echoed, closer now, and suddenly Lasciel's whole body stiffened before she threw herself into the air in a tight roll, my body still clasped in her grip but now held tight to her extended underbelly and waist. We hit the floor with a thud and I felt the hot burn of the fluid gold coating more of my body, reaching nearly down to beneath my ribcage. She released a scream of misery half a second after we hit and popped back up, and I heard the sizzle of acidic blood running down her back to splash against the ground of this place.

Her grip on my throat tightened so hard I felt the previous gold layer crumbling as she snarled into my ears furious. "_Expel the intruder_! _Now, human_!_"_

I choked through the haze rising in my mind. _Why was I resisting again?_

Another caw and then clarity for a moment.

_Denarian._

The word reverberated in my mind, in my heart, and it was synonymous with _enemy, _with the definition of _evil_.

She hissed again above my head as the air ignited and a pillar of white-toned flame erupted from beneath us. She had no way of dodging the blow; and neither did I. In moments the _fwoosh_ of it had become my entire world and I knew that the fight was over.

Then the stone bodied raven, about the same size as an overfed bald eagle, dove into the fold and tore my body from her death grip and the ravaging _Soulfire_.

* * *

Chapter Seven concluded.

Translations:

"_Odin er det deg? Jeg visste ikke at du hadde kommet tilbake til vårt land_" Father Odin, is that you? I did not know you were returned to our country.

"_Er din debatt med Tor løst_?" Is your debate with Lord Thor resolved?

"_Jeg trodde det var usansynnelig_. _Du må være gal jotne, hvis du tør å etterligne hans kjæredyr_" I thought it unlikely. You must be mad jötunn, if you dare to emulate his pet.

_"Brødre_, _til meg_!_" _Brothers, to me!


	8. Chapter 8: Sacrifices moving forward

The raven carried my limp form over to Lash and my alter Id, settling down with a slow flap of wings at least five or six feet across from tip to stony tip, and let me collapse to the odd textured ground.

He dropped down to one knee to examine my form, running a critical eye over where the gold silk had coated from just beneath my throat nearly down to my crotch, and all I could do through the haze clouding my mind was rest there bonelessly.

"Humph. Typical. Next time perhaps try to contribute to the fight instead of being toted about like a stuffed animal, Dresden," he said dismissively. I took that to mean that he couldn't find much wrong with me, at least pseudo-physically speaking.

An enraged howl emanated from behind the wall at roughly the same point as the raven cawed one last time and ascended into the air in the opposite direction.

"_Dammit_. Prepare yourself again Lash." He ordered to the semi-fallen-angel, and with a wary note of agreement she focused over the wall again. He kicked me hard in the chest at the edge of the gold and I groaned, the impact sending a spiderweb-crack all across the surface surrounding it. A few fragments snapped off and clunked to the ground with a solid thump. "Loan us some of your never-ending willpower, Dresden, or this finale shall finish up with another set of malevolent eyes depicted from your obstinately-thick skull."

With that said, he suppressed a grunt as more gold fluid cascaded against the semi-transparent shield hanging before the wall, proving that Lasciel was well on the way to recovery.

_Get up... come on. _

I groaned pitifully again and rolled over onto my side just as the ground rumbled, and suddenly Lasciel's spidery form smashed against the upraised stone. My subconscious self coughed hard and pressed a hand against his own chest, and he swore weakly beneath his breath as her partially blinded eyes narrowed in satisfaction at discovering a weakness.

"_He will be _mine_, each of you shall!_" the Denarian hissed.

In response he placed one hand firmly underneath my right arm and dragged me up to my feet to stand beside him, saying warily, "I believe I just requested your aide. Move."

Lasciel crashed against the barrier again even though it repelled her form a few feet away, but heavy cracks were forming and reaching back toward us now, and with a heavy shake of my head I heard the raven's caw as if from far away echoing back toward the battle. And immediately, akin to a dam bursting, the cloudy thoughts Lasciel had wormed into my mind to turn me to her slave vanished before the onslaught of remembrance.

_Maggie; your daughter. Karrin; your best friend. Ebenezar; your grandfather._ _Thomas; your brother._

With each reverberation of that echoing caw that reflected off the walls a name and a face to accompany it surged up to the forefront of my mind. The web of cracks lining the corrupting silk redoubled the same, until abruptly the whole thing collapsed into a hundred burdened shards that crashed down around our feet. I registered the same happening to him as well, but I barely had enough time to drag my eyes up from the ground as the barrier before us surrendered in the same moment to Lasciel's physical assault.

I looked upon Lasciel's once-beautiful face, the vile satisfaction etched into her wide maw and slanted eyes. I heard the rapid scuttling of her lower legs making a hasty recovery over uneven ground. And I felt my anger toward the Fallen angel revive with each galloping step that she took toward us.

It wasn't like any of the rages I had felt since Mab stepped upon the Waterbeetle just days ago - this ran _deeper_ than that. A revulsion at her very being and her intentions, a burning outrage that she had very-nearly succeeded in destroying my will and sense of self. That she had almost, and would proceed to in just seconds, maim and slaughter my alter Id and Lash so that she could have utter control over who I am.

"_Dresden!_"

"Dresden!"

"My host!"

Three different sets of voices yelled from three different directions to drag for my attention, and I gave it to them with a sudden and fierce scowl. My left hand clamped down onto Lash's shoulder as my right gripped his own, and I felt a narrow and instant channel open up between us in a similar but distant manner to what occurred when I set foot to the island of Demonreach; instead of limited _omniscience_ from the Genius Loci, however, we shared limited _omnipotence_.

This realm was _ours_, and the spider had no right of reign or dominion within it any longer.

By taking up Lasciel's coin I had regained her usage of Hellfire, but the Soulfire that had once replaced it had not been stolen away or suppressed in the process; instead, it had passed onto the only relatively pure-spirit tied to my soul still, the now truly self-aware and relinquished Lash, and she directed that energy into and through me once more. I acted as a bridge to fortify and strengthen that energy through my willpower as he had mentioned, adding my utter wrath toward the Denarian to the mixture, and then funneled the supercharged mass down into a narrow channel into my subconscious where he in turn blended it into his own reserves.

It took maybe half a second to perform. We acted upon the speed of _thought_.

Lasciel's fangs came up and a glint of gold fluid dripped from the tip of each before he punched her clock out, literally.

"_Forzare!_" he yelled, and a fist of silver-and-vibrant red energy erupted from his body from hair-tip to toes. It spread outward as far across as his outstretched arm-span would have been, large enough to nearly cloak the Fallen. The raw size of it was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and it was terrifyingly decisive in effect.

Her malicious gazes flinched back in the milliseconds before contact, but she couldn't have stopped or changed course if she had wanted to with every fiber of her being. One moment she was barreling at us, and the next... the amplified Soulfire had wrapped around her and detonated with the light of a flash grenade. One single high-pitched note of her fury echoed into the landscape before she was silenced, and when we could all see again, all that remained of Lasciel's self was a fine purple and blood soaked mist scattered across the mindscape for close to thirty feet around, settling to the ground in the shape of her sigil.

The exhaustion that followed was shared between each of us, and he let out a sharp gasp before dropping down to his knees, while I fell to his side and sprawled on my ass looking up at the opaque gray ceiling overhead. Lash grew still and cool with a series of sharp inhalations and the gold webbing dissolved along her form, allowing her to collapse forward atop my body as well.

We stayed like that for a long time.

* * *

It felt like days had passed before I came to.

Not to my physical self yet, but to the same place as usual when I met with my alter Id. He was sitting on a wooden stool with a jar of malevolent purple mist swirling within that dangled off the floor by... what looked to be the same rope that I had bound Susan with all those years ago, the night she took my seed and began to brew our daughter within.

I didn't see Lash anywhere around, and from his flat expression I doubted that meant much good news, which he confirmed.

"Congratulations, Dresden. You've seen the last of Lasciel until you finally give up the coin," he told me quietly.

_He's.. burned out. We both are. _My thoughts felt sluggish by comparison. That little trick had taken almost everything I'd had left in the bank to give. It had to have done the same to him and... "Where's Lash?" I asked him.

He repeated with more emphasis on each word, "_You've seen the last of Lasciel._"

Pain flickered across our features, his careworn and disgusted, mine nearly of defeat.

"She died." I stated quietly.

He didn't bother to deny the claim.

"_Dammit_. Another woman I couldn't save..." it might have been strange to think of her like that, but Lash had truly come a long way from being the mere shadow of the Fallen that she had started off as. Even Uriel's gift had chosen to take up residence within her form rather than fade away.

"Before you start blaming yourself, know that she willingly relinquished her life and what remained of her own spirit to bind the original to this cage," he told me, almost reaching out to rap it with one knuckle. He stopped at the last moment and simply ran a finger down the side tenderly. "You see that sacrifice now as something that can not be broken free from, but this once I implore you to look with your Sight." His words came out with just a little of the passion I was used to hearing from him.

Wearily I nodded, and opened up my eyes to the effect in place. What I saw was both terrifying and hideously unfair, like some kind of Eldritch Abomination. Lasciel's demonic form was pinned to the floor with scattered pieces of Lash's soul piercing it throughout like living chain and cuff. Bone and muscle wrapped around and embedded into the flesh of her original and looped around the silver, burning cage of Soulfire tightly.

Her simple, graceful face and hair sat atop Lasciel's monstrous features and were tied tightly around the back to blind and mute her, and with a sickening realization I saw Lash's still-active eyes following my own gaze.

_Holy fuck... she's still _alive_ like this?_ Horror welled up within the emptiness I felt inside. It wasn't fair - it wasn't _right_. She had protected my life at the cost of her own _twice_ now.

It was too much. I forced my Sight closed and turned to throw up along the floor violently, dry heaving long after there was nothing further to come up. He exhaled and spoke up while I was on my knees. "She did it for you. She truly loved you in the end, and between that and the remaining Soulfire, she _chose_ eternity like this over dying and leaving Lasciel free to take you over in the future. _Never forget this_."

His words only made it that much worse. I wiped my mouth on the back of one arm and looked at that jar filled with the Fallen's essence, and finally whispered, "_Lash... I'm sorry. Hell's bells, I''m sorry._"

The slight scuffle of the stool sliding backwards as he stood up followed that, and he leaned down to grip the front of my shirt and drag me to my feet, anger radiating outward. "Don't you dare belittle her choice, Dresden. You lost that privilege when you Named her, set her free."

I met his stare for a few seconds, then nodded once in understanding. "You... loved her, didn't you?" I asked him in that same quiet tone.

He tried to scoff it off but couldn't manage, instead finally looking away. "It doesn't matter any more. Lasciel won't have any control over you from this point forward unless you choose to allow it. Her magic is irrevocably tied into your own from here on end, and there is no getting around that, but her persona will never again be able to influence things. We are free of that possession." His hands released me and he stepped back, sitting on the stool again. "Go. Our time before Oberon is full and whole again is dwindling," he concluded in an empty tone.

I stared back for a few moments more before turning away with a final glance at the jar and rope my eyes interpreted Lasciel's cage to be, and then forced myself back to consciousness.

* * *

When I opened my eyes once more to the Nevernever, it was to find Odin's raven long gone.

As I made to sit up I felt pain in my chest, a phantom remembrance of the damage he had taken, and slowly pushed up off my aching knees after wobbling for a few moments. I saw Lasciel's mark on my hand was dull and lifeless, but still visible as if a permanent scar. I managed to find the emotion to snarl at it quietly, "_Fuck you_, _Denarian_."

Nothing. Not so much as the faintest whisper across my mind stirred.

_So he was right_, _then_.

I gripped my staff tighter in my left hand and began creeping forward the rest of the way down the tunnel from Midgard to the lower realms. One way or another, I was going to get my answers out of Loki, that much I was determined to do. And no one else was going to take away those I cared for.

* * *

Chapter Eight concluded.


	9. Chapter 9: Here lies Hel

The stone tunnel carried on for a time in a natural silence that was only interrupted by my boots scuffling along the floor, the faint thump of the staff hitting astride them, and my own breathing.

Then that noise began to fade off, as if swept up by an unseen wind and spirited away.

Nothing about the tunnel seemed to have altered any on a visible range and I took the time to extend my senses out further, to try and feel through any kind of illusion that would be in place. In the end it required me to open up my Sight once more, and what an illusion it was. The bleak stone had been replaced by blood-saturated earth and dirt, and only fiffy feet or so out rested a massive crumbling hole. The tunnel ended at the back of it despite seeming to go on far further to my natural eyes, and carefully tapping my staff against the floor again showed what had happened to the rest of the noise - waves of sound rippled forward and were sucked down and swallowed away by the gaping void.

_Looks like I've found the entrance to Hel. Great,_ I thought unhappily and began to stride forward again. Counting out the distance to the hole I stopped just short and looked down at the flared and rough edges leading down into the sticky red flume.

I opened my mouth to utter something akin to 'Geronimo', maybe even a nice 'bombs away'. Anything particularly witty just to try and take the unease out of my mind right then, dancing up and down along my spine. Instead my voice was swallowed whole before the sounds could even finish forming in my throat, and with a grimace I took the last step over the edge, gripping my staff tightly. For a long moment my body teetered in the open air as if refusing to go any further, a foul wind brushing against my skin, and then I was falling at an even more terrifying speed than the descent from the Dragon's Domain.

I saw brown-red, rotted bony faces decorated the interior of the vertical passageway, eyes alight with haunted yellow foxfire and jawbones moving as if screaming their agonies, and it spurred me to grip my staff tighter still and focus in preparation for whatever boogieman was dwelling at the bottom if this was just the opening.

For once my expectations were not met, let alone surpassed, however.

There were no half-formed beasts, no slavering demons itching for the chance to taste mortal flesh again. I just accelerated again until the tunnel was all a blur, and then my feet touched down softly to burning ground as if such was commonplace. A bit of vertigo was the worst part of the experience, really. There were a good amount of ghastly figures shambling back and forth in varying states of misery before and around my own form, but they didn't so much as spare me a hungry glance. They seemed content to just wander endlessly around, and I was just as happy to oblige them and get out of the way, quickly browsing the pathways available to make sure there wasn't another abrupt pitfall, and then I slammed down on the concentration needed to maintain the third eye.

Painfully, _blissfully_, it shut down and while I was still left staring at unpleasantly decaying men and women, at least the environment had settled down into an innocuous, plain brown and shadowed cavernous appearance. Striding uneasily ahead and keeping a wide berth of the condemned shuffling along lazily, I soon found myself approaching an office-desk settled down next to a stone map. Seated behind it, naturally, was what looked like a lawyer despite the advanced state of decomposition to his overall body and ragged suit.

_A zombie-lawyer. Lovely_. I warily approached what I assumed was a man, and his head turned a full one-eighty to face me.

"And what can I do for you, Mr... " he paused and reached down to open a drawer and pull out a thick red file. The rotted eyes perused the details rapidly and with many an awkward glance back up to me with one of them as the other continued reading.

I shuddered a little. _Eyeballs were_ _not_ _meant to move like_ _that even in a hellish afterlife._

At the end as I stood there in silence he set the file down. "You do not seem to belong. Parts of you, yes, and parts of you, no. But a unified whole tethers you together. What business do you have in this place?" he asked at last in a grave tone.

I filed that information away for later. He might have been detecting Lasciel's presence, or the Hellfire she had brought. But if I was being honest, I had the uncertain sense that just maybe I had crossed the line once too often over the last few years to end up with a cushioned white cloud and harp when my time was up.

"I need to get down to the roots of Yggdrasil." I told him. He just stared blankly back at me. "Okay, I need to talk with Loki," I clarified. Still nothing. "About the end of the world?" I tacked on with a frown.

At that he nodded suddenly, as if putting together something he hadn't quite been seeing clearly before. "Ah! You are the next Ragnarok Spokesman." He thumped the file with his good thumb. "Very good, that clears up many of the inquiries in here." Nodding to himself the lawyer ducked down to open up another drawer, and I saw an odd assortment of broken relics jangling around his bony fingers. In a few moments he found what was needed and rose to his feet in a precarious lean to one side, pointing at the stone map with a rusted dragon tooth.

"Down the stairs and across the Bridge of Judgment, carrying ahead until you reach the river. Just follow it over the edge and use this key to unlock his chains - but I feel it necessary to remind you against removing his shackles altogether until you are both back in Midgard; the last Spokesman didn't and Madam Hel is _still_ roasting him over the coals for it after rebinding Loki for another ten thousand and one years in punishment for the damage to this realm," he explained.

"Ah... got it." I had no intention of freeing Loki, whatever this guy thought, though I was beginning to feel nervous about the way everything was going so far. He nodded smartly, dropping his jawbone to the ground with a curse, and bent down to grab it. While he finagled with reattaching the hinge with one hand he pressed that dragon tooth into my own hands and waved goodbye.

"Off with you, sir Spokesman." I shrugged helplessly at the situation and shoved the object into my jeans backpocket.

As I walked toward the aforementioned stairs I began to appreciate the size difference in the realm I was now striding through. Hel was smaller than I might have imagined the realm to be in previous years. The whole of it was condensed into the cavern by a stage of multitudes; the entrance and, if one had the means to escape from here, exit back into the tunnel in Midgard took up the first tenth of a mile, and those roaming around in a daze therein were the purer souls. These guys up near the entrance had no eternal suffering and no glory either, forced to simply wander endlessly until the time to return.

Valhalla got the warriors and courageous men and women, while Hel was home to all those others who passed away in these realms. Didn't die a grand death? Murdered somebody for a piece of their property? Hel didn't differentiate between the cause when it came to arrival, only the sorting thereafter.

The next two-tenths of the cavern suddenly gave way to a downward trail of earthen steps that were just a little _too_ spongy for my liking; they literally oozed viscous red fluid each time my boot made contact.

_A vampires paradise._ I thought uneasily.

At the end of the hundred and eight steps the path branched off in eight different ways, and several of them angled down for where the condemned would spend the rest of their eternity here according to the sin in question that they had died under. A whisper of wind carried up from those places toward where I now stood to deliver their haunted misery, telling of the anguish they suffered and the regrets committed toward life. With a gulp I blocked the almost-white-noise out and began to trek forward.

Three of the pathways stretching out to the sides and before me tugged at my body like a firm ocean current as I passed, oozing over my flesh like some kind of disease as I walked and sending a note of further unease dancing up and down my spine. It was far harder to ignore that than the faint wind had been, and in thinking about the former I focused upon the noise once again. What the half-rotted lawyer had told me before was starting to make a very unpleasant sort of sense as my stride slowed, and I knew that if I stayed there for much longer that my feet would begin to drag me down into oblivion. I managed to shake the feeling away and push on with a hastily lengthened stride by focusing onto the eighth and final path that lead straight onward.

Still, a faint whisper followed me until I was well away, and I learned that glancing over the sides of the apparent-wooden rail running on either side of the last path only amplified that calling, as if somewhere deep inside of me a yearning desire to turn back and go down was making itself known.

_The sooner I'm done here the better,_ I thought warily and concentrated on reaching the end of the way only a short distance off, running over what the stone map had displayed. According to it the river would soon appear thereafter and it only ran one way, namely _out_ and as a constant feeding of the roots at the depths of the Norse realms.

* * *

A series of bone-hued boats were moored on the edge of the river, tied in place to stone grave markers in the damp ground by what appeared to be sinewy rope.I just shook my head and continued. I didn't see anyone else around keeping watch, so I clambered into the nearest boat and flicked the rope loose with the end of my staff, then sat down and waited for the currents to do their job.

Over the next few unerringly silent minutes the boat rocked all over the place and nearly threw me out more than once, and I had to hold on with my elbows and knees gripping the sides just to keep my staff from being lost, ducking my head down into my chest for more balance. It was this that prevented me from seeing the waterfall until the boat was upended right on the edge as if some invisible tether had been tied around it, and I was pitched out into thin air with a shout.

Mist obscured what lay ahead and below, but I managed to slow my descent in much the same way as I had on the way from the Dragons Domain toward the land of the Jotunn, spitting out a hasty "_Veni chi!_" and making a light splash as I sank up to my chest in water. My staff flew out of my hands and was swept up immediately. I spat out a mouthful of murky liquid and began wading hastily after the wooden foci until the slow current pushed the both of us out of the mist and up onto a tiny isle of stone lodged in-between two literally behemoth-sized roots.

Want a perspective on what I mean? You could fit an oil tanker length-wise within the body of one and still have space to either side. I was briefly held up by awe that something like this could exist even within the Nevernever, but that passed fairly soon as the stone beneath my feet began to shake and rumble violently.

"What the hell?" I had to plant my staff firmly against it and lean heavily into the worn wood to keep from being knocked down into the lengthy expanse of brown water at my back, and after several jarring moments I picked up the cautious tone of a feminine voice calling across the distance toward me.

"You should not be here." She said and slipped out from behind one of the folds, a small woman of no great beauty and built rather like a figure of stone than something more easily soft and appreciable. She seemed to have no trouble as the land shuddered and rumbled terribly, and I began to carefully slip over toward her- until she upended a wooden bowl of venomous red and yellow fluid into the path before herself.

That sight reminded me of the myth of Loki, and that in turn told me to hightail it away before any of the stuff could make contact; the ground wasn't just shaking by accident, it was being rocked back and forth beneath the wild thrashing of the chained-down frost giant, unable to control himself for the pain of the very venom now drifting my way that was dripping down into his eyes.

I gave her a sharp look before calling up a gust of wind to lift myself out of harms way and then tumbled ungracefully a few feet to her side. She looked down at me with squinted eyes. "Why do you bring this misery onto yourself?" She asked.

"What misery?" I questioned her in turn through the continual shaking. Without answering she turned and retreated back behind the fold in the root that she had come from, which I could now see from my new angle had been carved open in the far-flung past and led to a set of stairs. Wearily I pushed myself up to follow her in.

What I found inside was the massive form of the chained Jotunn, bound by wrist and ankle through the bones in a trail that seemed to have sewn itself down to the elbows and up toward the knees. His flesh was dark brown and knotted in many places, and like the one that I had first encountered Loki was rougher and larger than any creature I had previously encountered.

His motions had ceased before I entered the room due to his wife once more collecting the venom in that bowl, seated at his head patiently and whispering what I assumed was comfort.

"Do you favor Hel's treatment, _Harry_; _Copperfield;_ _Blackstone_; _Dresden_?" Loki asked in a carrying whisper, licking his lips in-between each word of my Name, and in the process re-pronouncing it almost tense for tense as I had in years past. I felt a strong allure well up within me to Listen clearly to his words, which flat out scared me more than everything else so far had been able to.

_Stars and Stones, how does he know my Name so thoroughly? _I wondered, briefly stunned and leaning back.

Loki stirred restlessly on the stone bed, stretching his bound limbs and the chains sinking beneath the surface of the roots tautly, as I collected my thoughts and took a wary step away.

"Who have you been talking to to pronounce my Name like that?" I demanded, using anger to offset fear.

The Jotunn craned his neck to look at me with his yellow-crusted eyes, maw stretching upward into the cheeks in a grin with far too many pointed teeth. "My unbinder is weary and wary, yes he is." Speaking almost as if to himself, Loki tilted his head back again and rested it down tiredly.

"Shall I answer you, _Harry; Copperfield; Blackstone; Dresden_?" He repeated my Name even more clearer than before. He said all of a sudden almost as soon as the previous statement was through, "A game. For each riddle you answer proper I will answer your own doubts, ah! And for each you fail you will undo a chain. If you fail utterly I will go free, slip through history, and do that which the Dragon has spoken of!" He promised with that same grin in place.

A sense of ill grew in me at his words. "What do you mean?" I asked, but he shook his head and thrashed once, shaking the relatively small location terribly for an instant.

"No free questions, mortal." He said in a completely different inflection of voice. "I ask a riddle, and you answer. If you stay silent the game is over and you get nothing." He told me.

This had all kinds of danger written across it, but stars and stones, I had less than twelve hours left and every single person I had dealt with so far had only pushed me further and further into the deep end. It was about damn time I pulled free and started swimming on my own.

"No." I told him flatly. He managed to crane his neck again and look toward me, grin still in place.

"_No?_" He repeated back at me in question. I extended my staff toward the bound figure and focused, not on him, but on his wife just above his head. Normally I wouldn't direct a spell at a woman unless she was one of the monsters, and regardless of her living in the Nevernever this woman was definitely still a human on some level. As such I didn't attack her, I shielded her. The same diamond-hard focused-shield that Elaine and I had created and that had once saved my life so many years ago came into being around Loki's wife and knocked the bowl of poison from her hands in the process.

The Jotunn thrashed again in terrible pain as his entire face and parts of his upper chest were splashed in the foul miasma, throwing me off my feet and into a hard wall, and for once knocking her off her feet as well. She crashed down and rolled around inside of the shield helplessly as the earth continued to rumble, and I knew she would be stuck until I either broke the weak point in the shield or she happened upon it by chance in this ruckus.

I felt a splitting headache develop the longer I stayed there like that, and scrambling as best I could I scooped up the bowl and thrust it back over his face to capture the thick drops of venom. My knees smashed painfully into the raised stone he was stretched over and more of the stuff spilled over the edges, but he soon settled down before I lost my grip over it entirely.

His skin darkened further and grew a sickening shade of yellow where it was burned, and he stared up at me in a look that many of my former enemies once had when they came up against me.

"I'm on a schedule here, Loki. I asked you politely before, and I'm going to do so again. Who taught you to pronounce my Name like that, and what do you know of Oberon?" I asked with a sense of calm I didn't really understand.

He spat a mouthful of slimy muck at me. In response to the hideous stain now coating my clothing I dumped the gathered poison down his throat.

Ferrovax had sent me here on a suspicion, and the way things were going I'd run out of time following this ghost trail. Either I'd get the answers I needed, or I'd do what I always did: Fuck somebody's day up until I finally did.

_The world's going to end if I fail, and dammit if I'm not going to do whatever it takes to keep it nice and healthy for my daughter to grow up in._

I dropped to the ground but kept the bowl as carefully positioned as I could manage through his wild rocking, sloshing more of it out than I wanted. Loki would probably die if I kept feeding him poison, and somehow I didn't have it in me to care. I poured what I had left down his gullet again and spilled most of it down his face and across his chin. From nearby his wife began shouting at me to stop. I forced her words from my mind, looking down at the chained and bound frost giant. The question and non-answer session carried on like that for a time, before his body stopped struggling. Most of the damage was spreading through his veins. "Enough!" He gasped dreadfully, anger apparent through the blood that gushed out of his mangled lips.

"Her name was Kumori!" He spat out agonizingly. His features were slacken and dissolved, his body shuddering now and again of their own accord, and I knew that he was dying. "She will slay you! I will be freed as promised!" His words were beginning to slur together before a wave of black energy enveloped his head and crushed it flat. The force of it threw me back toward the doorway, my staff slipping out of my fingers as I hit my head against the floor and began to see stars. The crack of the shield fading dimly registered as Loki's wife rose to her feet, veil crumbling with her ascent.

I found myself staring up at Cowl's apprentice hazily as she spared the dead Jotunn's body a long look. As I lay there on my back staring up at her in disbelief she spoke up. "I think that is quite enough of your time spent in discussion here, Harry Dresden." She told me quietly.

"W.. how in the hell are you still alive?" I asked her slowly, remembering the details somewhat hazily of that Halloween night several years ago, if that. She had been swept up in the aftermath of the Darkhallow's ritual hurricane as it came apart like the remaining zombies that Grevane had awoken.

She looked down at me, then toward her own gloved hands, and answered in a tired voice. "I am not." And with that she reached up to draw the hood back from her face. I flinched at the skeletal appearance beneath, thinking for a short moment that it was Mavra staring at me. "A fate worse than death, Harry Dresden." She told me in that same tone, and I could honestly agree that she was right. Whatever happened after her mentors Darkhallow was undone, Kumori had paid a sharp price for it.

"It does not matter. I may better serve our purpose in such a state of being, and for that alone I am accepting of it, if not satisfied. Enough of such talk! I can sense you gathering your will!" She snapped out suddenly and then brought one hand forward, the index finger pointing to just beside my head.

A flicker of the same black energy that had engulfed Loki's head and crushed it in like a tin-can soared from her extended digit and drilled a hole into the root and rock nearby almost instantly. I flinched as the tainted aura about it crossed my senses; it felt like a brush with death itself, and about as pleasant. I instantly let go of the power welling up inside of me.

The last guy who had that kind of a presence was Shagnasty.

"I would have preferred to simply kill you quickly and emptily, Harry Dresden. I know that you do not involve yourself in these kinds of affairs of your own resolve in most situations, but you have developed an unnerving knack for completely undoing our plans when you do interfere. I am afraid your death _must _come to pass before the final hours of Oberon's return." And with those words spoken, she struck.

And so did the body behind her.

As Kumori brought one hand up again to destroy me Loki's body gave a terrible posthumous thrash. I was already on my hands and ass when it happened, but she was on her feet and this time around not expecting the assault to her center of gravity.

Kumori tumbled forward and the burst of death energy smote the roots over my head, and I threw myself forward to snatch up the staff while she took a moment to recover. I had just laid my fingers on it when I felt that same presence and barely slammed my nose to the ground in time for it strike directly overhead; and I mean _right _above my skull, so close that the hairs along the back and top were shaved almost flat. My poor hat took the brunt of it and died a pitiful death. So now I'd not only lost my protective duster from Susan in the Dragons Domain, but my only fucking hat that had survived everything else to come my way in the last decade and change that I've been fighting these assholes.

_Enough is enough_.

Kumori was now a Black Court vamp, and she had already been tough as a mere wizard. I had very little available to me that could sucker-punch her strong enough to save my skin, but what I did have was something that she could not possibly predict I would possess. I threw my staff back in the direction she had been at to buy myself enough time to flip over onto my side and focus, and sure enough that action prevented her from consuming me with another burst of black energy as the wooden aide was caught up instead.

Normally at this point the opponent might be snarling in frustration, and I might just be snarling back in desperation. Kumori was something else altogether. Her dead expression barely conveyed anything at all, and I knew from Mavra is was definitely possible to show your emotions despite the seemingly lack of muscles and flesh.

She was calm and in control even as I kept dodging her intended assault, focusing instead on the next motion in determination. I'm hoping I ruined her mood with what I used next.

The smell of sulfur filled the environment as my staff was undone, and the next pulse of energy flew from her fingers at about the same point the Hellfire erupted from my own hands, the kinetic energy of _Forzare_ shrouded in it.

* * *

Chapter Nine concluded.


	10. Chapter 10: Toward Asgard

When our two oppositely-fueled spells met, the air seemed to stiffen and come to a crawl, as if time was gradually halting in the immediate vicinity of our clash. My thoughts dredged to the surface through a mire of exhausting Will, and three immeasurably long seconds crept by as my own eyes met her almost lifeless ones. At last something in the air buckled, a weakening of strength from her end, and with a heavy roar the energy behind her spell rebounded and kicked her out into the previous entry way, while an opposite and very nearly equal push surged down and slammed me even harder and deeper into the floor to the tune of six or seven ribs cracking.

I coughed and lurched upward against the force and sprayed my lower chest and stomach in blood, the thin shirt I wore pierced on the tips of at least three different crimson and white tips. Instantaneously I felt my mind flash from clarity to the unending _pain_, a blazing crimson red of agony that blotted out everything else in sight, and finally faded away into a black, empty numbness, unseeing and unfeeling.

I had no idea what happened over the next small eternity, but when I was able to consciously see and think again I swallowed back a harsh breath of air that slipped out just as quickly, again and again as I hyperventilated and weakly lifted one hand by instinct to the blood-stained shirt. My fingers spread over the holes and then to the underlying flesh and re-knitted bones without quite accepting it. The lingering memory of the shards jutting up from beneath haunted my mind, and it was long minutes before my brain received enough oxygen to slow down and process the situation.

Kumori hadn't returned yet, and I was somehow still alive.

Loki's corpse gave another thrash as the muscles twitched and spasmed in decay, and I remembered where I was and what had happened once the land settled down again. _Stars and Stones... how? _I wondered, wearily clambering up to my feet and swaying from temporarily blood loss - I noted the indention in the ground where I had laid was soaked crimson in it, in my own lifefluids, and that my shirt was still dripping dewdrops freely as I stood there.

I realized that more important than that weak _how_ I was still in one aching piece was _why_, and I used one hand against the nearby wall for support as I approached the entrance, the other hand outstretched in preparation to cast a shield if I had to.

I found Kumori impaled on a section of root- what she had left behind, at any rate. Sections of her own black magic had struck out and ripped her open, gutted the already shallow chest cavity wide and left her faintly pulsing heart on display, but just beneath that and through the stomach and spine was the gnarled and black coated span of wood.

For a moment my fingers twitched to lower, before I raised the hand again and forced myself to concentrate. I knew enough about the Black Court vamps that this kind of a wound might not be permanent, let alone fatal, and there wasn't enough information to know _how_ she had been one of their kind - had Mavra found her after the Darkhallow?

I couldn't assume she was defenseless, and I couldn't afford to leave her there.

"_Forzare_!" as before I funneled a stream of Hellfire down into the spell and stepped back. A moment later and her voice came to life in a savage and heartless scream, going on for long seconds and petering off into an animal-like groan until all that was left was a faint whimper. I watcher her body consume itself as the force spell ripped her in twain and spread the fire across both halves. The last section to be consumed was her gaunt face, and I turned my head away to avoid watching any more. In less than a minute Kumori was truly dead and little more than a pile of ash on the floor, and the root behind her continued to burn even without my energy supporting it any longer.

I had killed twice over with magic in the same day, now. It left a pit in my stomach to use the forces of creation in such a way, and it shouldn't have affected me like that after what had happened back at Chichen Itza, but I felt worse for misusing that power than I had when I acceded to being Mab's bitch on that stone table in Faerie.

More blood dripped off of my shirt and I reluctantly acknowledged the fact that I had to do something about it as well as the pool behind me if I wanted to keep from being manipulated by whoever came across it.

"First my duster, then my hat and my staff. But my _shirt_? _Really_?" I tried to use the words to distract me from the nauseating scene and reality of the situation, tugging it off and holding at arm's length toward the rest, and I proceeded to wring out as much of my blood as I could for a minute. The motion finally helped distract me from Kumori's demise. By the time I stepped back out toward the muddy riverbank I had burned and purified the rest of the stains and such in the room, but I chose to leave Loki as he was - his family would already hate me for his death, but depriving them of even a corpse to do with what they would left another sour taste in my mouth that I didn't want to deal with.

For a few minutes I stopped outside of that giant root and just thought. Aside from going back to Ferrovax, I was out of leads to follow. I had no idea where Oberon was or how I could get to where he _used to be_ sealed away, and all I knew now was that the Black Council was _definitely_ involved.

I could try to go to Faerie and hope I was lucky enough to stumble over his current resting place, but then what? It had taken over a dozen capital-D Dragons to punch his clock at full strength and he was very nearly back to that point.

Even with both of the surviving Dragons working _with me _on the field, what could I do against him like I was? They were so far higher in power that I was likely to get smeared into a bloody pulp between they and Oberon. It wouldn't even be the same as it was at Chichen Itza, where I had had quite a few friends and allies to back me up against the Lords of Outer Night and the Red King in combat.

In the middle of my grim musing, as if from afar a name drifted through my mind faintly... _Asgard._

"Asgard..." I repeated aloud, following the thoughts that formulated in the moment, "former home of Odin." Then I stood up a little straighter. "Former home of _Odin_ but now home to his son_Thor_?" I asked the open air.

It was possible Thor was just as powerful as his father was. It was also possible that he was the reason Odin had given up his position as head of the Nordic gods however many eons ago that had transpired, and that he wouldn't be nearly as agreeable to try and work with as Vadderung had proven to be lately. I'd have to figure that out for myself when the time came. If nothing else I could appeal to Aesir's sense of survival, but I had a feeling that his pride would probably halt that discussion in its tracks.

For now, I had to get out of Hel. I wasn't about to trespass through her domain _again _with Loki's demise on my hands. Clenching the amulet near my throat I focused on what my mother knew of this place, of any of the Nine realms, and of the areas near them.

Then I muttered "_Apartum!_" and stepped through the tear in reality that formed.

* * *

The journey was not a pleasant one. I emerged back into the open plains outside of Midgard's main gate far too long after departing, stepping out before the entrance that I had powered through earlier that day. As I had expected the guards saw me and stiffened. With Lasciel's communication ability active I tried a reluctant greeting in their own tongue. "_I mean no ill this time_, _and seek entry again_," I told them a little thickly.

The nearest guard aimed his hammer at my head even as he replied. "_Back, o' foul Jotunn! We have felled your kind before!_" the guard shouted as he and the other backed up to the entrance.

I realized what they were about to do just in time. "_Gravitus!_" I yelled with both hands thrust toward the gateway. I expected to feel a vast strain for using the spell yet again in so many hours, but instead I felt as if I had tapped into a ley line - my magical muscle flexed and slammed down with all the viciousness I could have hoped for, sending metal screeching and groaning as the multiplied weight came rushing down upon them, and both men collapsed nearby beneath their own strength when they tried to force the way ahead closed again.

Without my staff, I expected to at least be winded, but my breath simply came a little heavier on each inhalation, almost as I was the one caught beneath the spell. Compared to using the gravity spell before and after, there wasn't much comparison - I was tapping the Fallen's strength just like it was my own - my subconscious was right. I strode forward in a low spring and lifted the spell just before I reached the gate, stumbling over and through before dashing ahead.

The tower I had taken to get to Hel had to have a counterpart that would lead up to Asgard, and it wasn't hard to guess that it would be in the 60 or 70 percent of Midgard that had been reshaped in Thor's image.

Once more the locals watched me warily even as the guards recovered and gave chase, calling out for more of their men to arms. I slipped down a narrow alley between two of the older-styled buildings still up in the remaining 30-something percent and rushed toward the end. I was fortunate to be long and lanky compared to short and musclebound as most of their people were, as it let me reach the far side before they had even made it half-way around the edge of the block, and I was long gone before they reached the shortcut I had used.

I was able to reach the newer area, but more and more of the guards were stationed therein and able to spot me as I passed. I didn't dare try another spell should it be enough to overcome their magic-nullifying properties, and indeed they seemed to be well aware of that fact. It didn't take long for them to corner me in such a manner. Winded and panting I turned away from the dead-end and faced the dozens of men surrounding me.

"_You may flee no further_, _Jotunn_! _You will have no quarter_, _no reprieve_!" one of them shouted at me. He was the tallest and by far bulkiest of the lot, rather like the guy I had dealt with when trying to get down to Hel before, and he had his hammer out like a throwing axe.

There wasn't much point in trying to convince them of what I was or why I was here, but I had to try anyway. "_If you value your life, lead me to Thor._"

The leader sneered. "_If you value yours, pray he is merciful!_" He growled out.

I blinked. "_You plan to take me to him? To Asgard?_" I questioned.

He gave a single grim shake of his hammer. "_You will be tried before the Alfather, Jotunn, for your atrocities!_" He clarified. I warily lowered my hands and stepped forward.

"_I surrender to your hands, Midgardian__._" I told him. He raised his hammer higher as I approached. "_I have need to see Thor._" I said.

He sneered at me again when I was close enough and then slammed the side of his weapon into the side of my head with enough force to knock me to the ground. I groaned, but maintained consciousness as the wound began to tenderly heal. The sight had to be unnerving if any were watching it closely enough, but for the most part they merely drew out rope and bound me in it before hauling my captive form along a different route than the one I had raced through earlier on.

It was like that that we soon came to a small building with a gleaming silver radio tower emerging from the roof, and they dragged me inside to a silver platform roughly ten feet by six that was set into the floor.

A thick cable ran up from one end along the wall and vanished up into the ceiling, but aside from that the room was otherwise barren and empty, and I opened my Sight to find out what was going on.

The platform shifted over into an elevator shaft, with the cable being the actual wires that hauled it up. I couldn't make out how far up the ceiling faded away into, but it was a good distance more than it looked from the outside or otherwise.

Most of the guards around me were wrapped in faint electric-blue auras when I looked at them, all tied into a set of runes pulsing along their hammers.

_So that's it. The hammer serves as the source._

I closed the third eye down just as one of them approached the edge of the platform and slammed said weapon to the floor of it with a low yell. Energy raced out along the cable and vanished to the antenna above, and then with the crack of thunder and lightning, we had vanished up above Midgard in what felt to be an instant.

* * *

Chapter Ten concluded.


	11. Chapter 11: Domain of the Aesir

With a boom just as loud as the one that had sent us up, the brief journey from Midgard into the heavens above concluded thunderously, and the deceleration pressed me harder into the floor with a low grunt of discomfort. They had no trouble leaning into the shift in motion and hefted me up into the air like it was nothing a moment later. The room we had arrived in was a fair duplicate of the one down below, and the large silver doors opened up automatically as they trotted forward.

My first look at Asgard was... dark and blank. The expansive clouds that made up the ground were entirely empty as far out as I could see, as if the environment had been wiped clear and clean away. Overhead the black thunderclouds flashed with intermittent streaks of white, and silver, and even a shade of blue when they spread especially far.

If the sight of that was disturbing to anyone else, my captors showed no sign of distress, nor at the elemental fury raging across the sky nearby, and as they turned and carried me around the back of the elevator room I saw why with a feeling of idiocy. Ancient stone structures sank into the cloudy ground ahead of us for a square three miles, at best guess, and at least that far across, but almost every available inch of surface was covered up by gleaming plates of steel and iron working, and the harried rush of soldiers akin to the Midgardians going here and there between the doorways.

_Perhaps Thor has a better idea of the threat Oberon represents to his kin than I had assumed_. It was something of a comforting thought- that I might not have to struggle to get him to see the danger breathing down his neck.

At several points the Midgardian's halted to let their superiors go ahead, but they in turn seemed to be hardly noticed at all, as if they were just a natural part of the terrain to be stepped around. Even I didn't warrant so much as a cursory glance, trussed up like a ham to the slaughter, which only emphasized the concern the Aesir were giving toward things.

As we passed down the main road of Asgard in this manner I was able to turn my head from side to side and exam just what was happening around.

I saw honest Dwarves, black skinned like coal and eyes a dull glow of red, with scraggly beards and tumbles of hair around the sides and back of their necks, wearing caps of iron along their otherwise bald heads. They wore varying tunics and aprons thick enough to withstand the furious display of fire within their kilns, and they were smithing most of the steel that lined the buildings around as the lesser attributes were brought in by others. None of them took notice of us either, but I saw more than one that was at work with weaponry- hammers, of course, but spiked on either end rather like the Jotunn that I had first encountered- and claymores, flamberges, and other thick and effective swords for the taller warriors striding about. Still-visible runes like the ones on the Midgardian's hammers were being cut into the surfaces by a pair of Dwarves situated in a corner of each shack that they occupied, gradually tying in the same power and protections. The little etchings faded from sight within moments of completion.

In time the path ascended and the rest of the buildings on either side were shut up tightly, or else opening and closing so swiftly that I could not catch a glimpse of what lay within before it was already too late. For the most part, the Aesir here did not look all that much different than the Midgardians, and mostly it was in the way they carried themselves and the slightly thicker, lankier forms they possessed that set them apart, with faint swirls of _power_ emanating freely in their wake. These were a men and women who possessed certain kind of strength that separated them from the rest I had seen so far.

In time the last of the Asgardians had departed the road the further up we traveled, and the lesser buildings likewise trailed off to leave a wide expanse at the top of the road exposed to the elements for perhaps a hundred feet around, where the true heart of the city stood alone like a silver and gray pedestal. The blackest clouds flashed heavily directly above the structure, wild and barely under control, but controlled they most assuredly were; for situated outside of the ancient, fortified doors within an aura of the same wild-blue energy surging around his body like a cape stood the deity himself, Thor, blond hair tangled and on end with static charge, and in his furrowed gray eyes stirred a hard look that challenged the element and grappled it to his will.

As one, the Midgardians sank to a single knee and bowed their heads, bringing the hand that was on the same side as their hammer up and over their chests and waited to be acknowledged. I was dropped down without a second's consideration and landed painfully on my knees, chest and chin, knocking the air right out of my lungs and leaving me wheezing there.

I was beginning to get used to the hard knocks by now, but that didn't make them hurt any less. I turned to other thoughts to distract myself from the ache while Lasciel's strength subtly smoothed the pain away. _I think I can see why they all follow him, but hell's bells, any being with the temperance and strength to control lightning like what he's doing has to be just a little unhinged._

By the time I could finally breath easily again a few minutes later, however, Thor _still _hadn't turned his attention toward us, and it was beginning to leave an ache in my shoulders and wrists just laying around that the Denarian couldn't remove. I'd allowed the Midgardians to take me captive because it meant an end to their chase and no one else would be hurt, and it would put me directly before Thor to plead my case in person, but as we waited for his attention the time left was dwindling before Oberon's return to godhood.

Frowning and directing some of my newly enhanced control, I muttered a choice wind spell and narrowed the range down considerably, so that instead of a thick gale or gust as I was wont to do, I pulled up a streamlined current that was just sharp enough instead of the usual bluntness and aimed it over my neck and down my back where the ropes bound my form. As expected, the binding properties that would have made it a mad struggle if I were to try to do anything physically were not meant to hold up to base magic alone, and with a flicker of mortal _will_ behind it, the ropes gave way and were split apart within moments.

I caught the way lead Midgardian tensed as the ropes fell away and I pushed up to my hands and knees again at last, but he and the others were apparently bound by their own decision to remain as they were until acknowledged by their god.

_Tough luck for them, then,_ I thought as I stood up and approached the Asgardian ahead carefully. I'll admit that it wasn't exactly easy, gathering the nerve to do that. Without even my staff for reassurance I was feeling particularly naked before the deity, even though I was theoretically more powerful now than when I had borne the Winter Knight's mantle.

I waited for a few more minutes from a safe distance, gradually inching forward, and I knew that I had to speak up sooner or later, but on my feet properly and approaching him, I could see now that Thor's concentration was more important than it was worth to risk breaking. You don't just interrupt someone juggling around with lightning unless you plan to get the both of you flash-fried, and I inherently recognized that this had the potential for catastrophic damage if he was distracted from his task.

Eventually he exhaled somewhat raggedly and closed his eyes. Then he brought one hand to his hammer, _the _Mjolnir of legend, and wrapped his fingers about the leather bound hilt before thrusting the ancient tool skyward with an unknown shout ringing from his lips.

While I had no idea what exactly it was that he was casting, the effect, on the other hand, was immediately apparent as all noise about us seemed to go away for a tense instant, swallowing up the distant rumble of the far away and overhead thunder, the distant clang of steel being wrought at our backs, and even my own breathing drifted aside as if drawn up into a sudden vacuum.

And then just as quickly as it had all gone, it reappeared around the Norse deity, preceding the _roar _of every single bolt in the sky from miles around being pulled forward and down toward him.

I had no time to utter a proper oath at the radiant maelstrom of doom and reacted on a sixth sense, on a driving instinct that warned me to _drop_, _hide_, and _pray_ that I survived as the first shards of brilliant light descended. So I flattened on the ground with a scream of shielding on my lips, in my mind, and the concentric oval force slammed around my body like a living shell in time to keep the residual energy burning through the air from nuking my body into dust. Even through that every hair on my head down to my toes stood on end and a heavy charge pressed against my skin, making a muscle here and there twinge on its own and spasm painfully.

_Hell's bells! What in fucks name is he doing!? _

Even with my head pressed into my chest, with one arm pressed over my eyes and the other over the back of my head, the glow illuminated the bones through my clenched eyelids and the noise rattled my entire skeleton, threatening to shake the marrow loose. I opened my eyes again and let go of my ears only after a dreadful minute had passed and the worst of the vibrations thrumming in the air had ceased. I had to squint to see through the image burned into my retinas, but by that point I could just make out the intense glow surrounding Thor. It had magnified to the look of a newborn star, a white so intense it seemed to render everything else around him into gray-scale.

And even still lightning surged down into Mjolnir and into his arm and body, and at last I realized exactly what it was behind his insane task. _He's actually absorbing it and supercharging his body like a living battery,_ I thought in disbelief, followed by dismay. _If anything goes wrong he'll destroy everything around us like a nuclear explosion. Hell, he'll probably take out most of Midgard below as well!  
_

I didn't dare lower my shield to try and get back some of that precious distance I had abandoned earlier again least the energy being directed into him snap out and kill me before I could so much as blink, but I renewed the effort of will sustaining the shield and tried to fortify with a bit of Soulfire this time around. I turned my head away from him again to keep from being permanently blinded, Denarian healing or no.

_I don't care what preparations he's made, if he keeps that much fuel burning for an extended period of time inside of his body, all that will be left here is a charred void._ Unhappily it occurred that maybe, just maybe, that was exactly what Thor intended to greet Oberon with. A storm so volatile and immediate that it consumed the entire Sidhe opposition in a single Pyrrhic cataclysm.

You know, that's the kicker about the elemental magics; they all had their own reaction when accessed, as I had often learned the hard way. Fire was the great purifier, the one that returned what it touched back to the barest state and cleared away refuge and such that might have accumulated. Water neutralized the rest of them almost wholesale, balancing out the system. Earth absorbed great force and could redistribute it accordingly. And Lightning, well, it amplified what it was given by an order of magnitude, with just as great a chance as going off and exploding you from the inside out if mishandled as it had of obeying your efforts.

Thor was among the greatest Lightning specialists in existence- it was what he was renowned for in legend. What he was doing right now was probably the greatest working of his own element of care since anyone had learned how to handle it, but I personally wanted to be as far away from where I now was as possible when he finally finished up. A low weight in the back of my pants suddenly reminded me that I still held what that lawyer down in Hel had referred to as Loki's key- he had called me the Ragnarok Spokesman or some such. An unpleasant sensation of foreboding told me that, having already witnessed the Jotunn's demise and lent a very critical hand toward it, my being here before Thor right now was not going to end well, one way or another.

* * *

Chapter Eleven concluded.


	12. Chapter 12: Slow revelations

When I chanced another glance toward the deity, the aura surrounding Thor had begun to subside. His skin crackled tautly, and a white sheen bristled over every hair visible, sending it flowing back and forth instead of standing on end, but a faint ashen-gray tinge began to appear at the very ends. His eyes lowered from the sky and a rocky breath exploded out of his chest, and the arm holding Mjolnir shuddered, but he swept the other hand up and grasped down tightly onto the leather-bound hilt to contain himself.

A hundred blue and white hued motes fell from the hammer and touched the ground beneath his feet, and as they did, thunder rumbled and tiny bolts scattered in every direction for a dozen feet, and a dozen more from there, repeating until the better part of the entire summit was bathed in cascades of streaking white energy. Most of them thankfully blitzed over my shield rather than cut through it directly, but they left a crackling itch spreading down over my body as they discharged further, numbing my limbs and making it hard to breath.

The Midgardians grunted in discomfort and the faint smell of burned skin. I managed to turn my head enough to see them weathering the assault with gritted teeth until the sparks had all faded away.

It took a little time for feeling to properly return to my body, but I wasted only a few seconds to struggle upright and stagger away from Thor's body, dropping to a knee unsteadily near the other near-humans. My shield crumbled and I couldn't find the strength of will to bring it back up right then.

_If that happens again, I'm as good as dead._

A long moment stretched out into another, and Thor inhaled and exhaled raggedly, but he slowly lowered the hammer back to his hip with no further incidents. Instead of tying it there as I first expected, however, he wrapped the looped end up and around his fingers in a rough knot, so that his grip would never stray from the hilt even if he chose to let go.

He turned his head toward the lower domain of Asgard and slowly blinked his eyes back open to the halfway point, and the tension in his body altered to some degree, rising up and settling into his spine, shoulders, and neck.

He took a steady step down and then another, and turned again to retreat back up the way he had come as if testing his mobility. He proved that point when he suddenly hunched over and threw himself to the far east corner up here, and even after Flying within the grip of Serenthrax and Ferrovax, I could no more easily spot his sudden movement than I could their own.

He vanished with a thunderclap and reappeared the same, so swiftly that they overlapped together in a boom loud enough to shake my bones, all in the span of a single second. The air hummed and buzzed with the electrons disturbed in his wake, the oxygen consumed into a quiet void directly over them, and it was a long few seconds before my teeth finally stopped clattering uncontrollably together.

Thor's voice rang out furiously, then - _exultantly_, _triumphantly_, the _exhilaration_ carried within it clear. And beneath it the satisfaction and challenge issued toward any who would stand within his way.

The Asgardian turned back to look down upon his reign and _finally_ took notice of the Midgardians, and myself. His expression hardly shifted any, and he strode back over toward us at a natural pace rather than the land-devouring bolt.

"What brings you here, now, my loyal brethren? Have the first scouts discovered the Fae's godking?" He greeted them mildly.

The Midgardian leader sprang to his feet as if he hadn't suffered a single burn and hesitated between grabbing me and launching into his explanation. His fingers clenched with the desire to have me under his control again, but the display of speed from his superior settled the matter after another second or two, and he spoke up.

"This _Jotunn_ has violated our treaty with their malicious kind, Alfather, and done worse still by the_ invasion_ of the Bifrost Tower, _ slaying_ two of our kin!" He stated in the same kind of tone that Donald Morgan had often used to describe my 'crimes'.

I wondered for a moment if the deceased Warden had ever met one of the Midgardians. It would certainly explain his fanaticism nicely.

Thor listened and looked over me - really, truly _looked_, as if seeing through a soulgaze. I had the uncomfortable feeling of what it must feel like to a vanilla mortal to be scanned beneath the third eye, and resisted the urge to shift around. I also held my tongue rather than attempt to dispute the claims as he watched me. Just getting to this point had taken far too much time already, and letting him make up his own damn mind on the matter was important enough; did I even appear as a Jotunn normally would, given an attempt to masquerade as a human? I wanted to doubt it, and yet the Midgardian's certainly believed it to be true.

The Aesir noticed something that made his features harden, and between one thunderclap and the next, he had appeared directly before me. He was so close that I could _feel_ the lightning burning in his veins, conducting through his muscles, and racing across his skin to burn away the hairs little by little. An unseen aura of kinetic force surrounded his body, and I was rocked back a step by the density of it, nearly falling flat on my ass again. I barely held my ground, and for that moment I gaped at the effect.

I mean, _Stars and Stones_, it was one thing to _know _that he was playing with lightning in such a manner, but to actually _feel_ that kind of power first hand? To make physical contact and realize the yawning gap that separated our distinctive power levels so firmly? That was another matter altogether.

"What say you, outsider? You are no Jotunn. And yet you bare traces of the Jotunnheim in the upper surfaces, and my father's aspects are marked throughout your form. Speak; and be thorough about it." He finally stated.

I swallowed dryly and spoke up, finally feeling for a moment as though the up-coming clash with Oberon might not end in utter disaster.

"I come by way of the Jotunnheim, yes, and with old Odin One-eye's aide both here and several days hence. I come by way of the Dragon's Domain, at the hand of Ferrovax and his faltering kin. I come by the Ways of the Earth, and the White Council of Wizards. And I come at behest of the Winter monarch, the Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen Mab herself," I said, summing up my passage and the forces responsible for it.

At his fathers name Thor's expression hardened further, but he did not stop me announce his sudden decision as I feared he might have earlier on.

"I've come before you now to ask your aide against the Sidhe King, from the Ways out of Hel and the World Tree's roots, and with the death of Loki of Jotunnheim upon my hands." After saying that, I slowly reached into my back pocket and withdrew the rusted dragon tooth key and held it up before him. "And I don't suppose you have any use for this up here, as I never had the proper chance to relinquish Loki from his bindings as I was told?"

If I had thought that Thor's look couldn't become any more stony after mentioning Odin's name, I was greatly mistaken. But it turned to a suppressed snarl almost as quickly, and he looked back toward the building some dozen or two feet away. "Aye, _outsider_. That would answer much. Go forth with my permission and unlock that which my father has taken from me eons past; go and release my _Einherjar._" His voice was intense in its attempt at neutral scorn, and he silenced the Midgardian's protests with another thunderclap.

I looked around when its echo failed to materialize, but after standing there for a pair heartbeats, it came from behind, and glancing down that way I espied the deity approaching one of the houses far below that we had passed on the way up.

"Right. _Einherjar_." Turning back to face the large stone building, I approached the imposing stone doors with the key in hand. The Midgardians seemed at a loss for what more to do as I passed them, but the leader uttered an unpleasant oath and hastened to my side.

I only spared him a bland look in return, and as I approached with the key, an aura akin to the one surrounding Thor's form pressed against me and would have repulsed me altogether if not for the object clasped in my hand. Instead it spilled smoothly around my body and molded to the shape my back, while he was stopped dead in his tracks, and I found my it hard to breath for the second time in so many minutes.

_Slow, easy inhalations,_ _Harry. _With the focusing thought I noticed the hitherto concealed hole set slightly to the side of the handles, and by instinct I pressed the tooth into it- a perfect fit. _Alright_, I thought, exhaling. _Time to find out if this was the right choice after all._

Gripping the handles, I leaned back and _pulled_, and the hairs along my body were pressed flat as the static discharge vanished. Faint, golden light radiated around the frame of the doors, and a low keening sound akin to sorrowful song accompanied it, but I continued to drag until the way before me stood wide open.

The sight within made me pause.

It was Valhalla. _The_ Valhalla, the valley of the dead, the home of the warrior souls.

* * *

Chapter Twelve concluded.


	13. Chapter 13: Valhalla opens

As the doors pulled open, the golden light within spread across the ground atop the summit, reflected from the roof overhead and against the tables and ornamentation decorating the hall of the dead.

Great white pillars of stone held the aforementioned shining ceiling aloft, stretching out for the better part of a mile before suddenly giving way to rolling, mist-shrouded hills of the same, and clumps of wheat lay bundled together every dozen or so feet in the same direction beside grinding-stones for making flour. The tables lined up directly down the center of the hall were piled high with all manner of bread and, if I remembered my mythology correctly, goats meat and milk and tankards of mead as well.

Predominantly men filled the area where they sat on stone seats with their heads bowed, contributing the rare gruff note in the melancholic tune suffusing the area, but it was primarily the handful of women situated unevenly at their backs where the song being sung originated.

Garbed in flowing raiment of white, hair pale gold even outside of that light, they too had their eyes closed. Sorrow seemed to be etched into their features as they sang, with lines not truly marring but in fact adding to the worn-down allure they presented, like an old impala with a few rough patches of rust along the edges and the paint lightened after too many years in the sun. The machine beneath still operated just fine, but it had seen its share of age and weathering, and that was the kind of sense I felt as I looked upon them all.

Panning my eyes deeper in the hall and squinting through the bright light, I tried to count how many souls there were. I came to a rough estimate that for every two or three dozen men, a single woman waited, while at other points it narrowed down to a mere four or five, and then widened back outward again to a line unbroken for fifty seats.

_They're Valkyries, _I realized, _standing behind those they had gathered._

It made sense. I watched and waited as the potent song finally reached its crescendo and then faded back into quiet silence barely disturbed by a breaths. The first Norseman opened his eyes and reached for a cut of meat and a cup of mead, and then paused when I stepped into the hall upon quiet footfalls.

As-one, the eyes of every single soul seated at that table and standing behind it turned to face me, and their Valkyries did more than that - they reached for the swords I had not noticed clinging to a left or right hip, and despite the untold millennia since they had last seen any real combat, they gathered themselves into a readied stance regardless.

_Why am I not surprised? Must be the lingering stench of Loki and the Jotunnheim. _I grimaced at the reminder of the dead frost giant and my clash with Kumori far below, putting those moments aside for now, and raised my hands in the same manner I was becoming accustomed toward of late.

When I spoke, I felt as if the words were somehow guided by instinct rather than thought.

"Your hour is here, gloried warriors of old! The dawn of Ragnarok gleams across the mail you have kept polished in preparation, the swords and warhammers of silver and iron! The time has come for the Einherjar to march once more into war!"

My arms had risen into the air of their own accord, and when the last word echoed throughout the vast hall, it was answered by a thousand voices cheering in tandem.

The Valkyries kept silent, still examining me. The nearest one finally strode across the distance on slow feet, and I lowered my arms again into the hands-out I-mean-no-harm position. She wasn't quite as tall as I was, but her aged blue eyes met mine like flickering embers left banked for too long, the life within barely enduring. Exhaustion was reflected in every step she took, trembling up her straight-backed form, but the dying fire seemed to take on a second- or third, or fourth, even, quality of strength.

Her wavy blond tresses ran nearly to the middle of her spine, and they bounced almost reluctantly along. Unlike the rest, the sword at her hip was replaced by an aged spear, and she rested both hands upon it as she walked. They stayed there even after she stopped, less than two feet away and well-within range of stabbing me in the gut with that tip.

"You are not the Alfather, or the son." Her voice was strained, coarser than the beauty spun out by the rest of the Valkyrie before. A faint, almost immutable scar lined the front of her throat where the vocal chords should have rested, I saw. "Who are you to speak of the Final Battle? Who are you to claim the Einherjar to strife once more?"

I sort-of shrugged and fell back upon what that dead lawyer had called me what felt a small eternity ago. "The Ragnarok Spokesman," I answered her simply.

Remembrance spread into her eyes, and those embers erupted into a burning fire once more. She took one hand from the spear haft and stepped back, facing the rest of the hall and the quieted souls again.

"Aye, Einherjar. The Spokesman speaks true! We march to war!" The noise that met that dwarfed the one that had greeted my own speech. It should have rattled the stone pillars and the roof overhead, but instead it bounced across every scrap of metal and armament, doubling and redoubling in volume while it lasted.

Before my eyes the gathered souls stood and in a flurry of blurred, distant movement, collected shields, and axes, spears and swords, helmets and breastplates and grieves, vanguards and more, simply reaching beneath the table before them or turning to the walls behind them and grabbing what they needed. In just seconds the first dozen Einherjar trotted at a brisk pace alongside their Valkyries, and then the next dozen, the next two and three dozen.

I stepped back from the older Valkyrie and spared the open doors at my back plenty of room for the approaching warriors to walk through. Within minutes the crowd lining the table had emptied, but still more marched in from those misty hills far ahead. They kept coming for nearly ten minutes, most if not all of them hesitating only a fraction at the barrier before the doors before carrying onward into Asgard again.

At last the final souls and Valkyries drew near, and I was surprised to see that the older woman with the renewed-look in her eyes was still standing across from me. I had lost track of her in the march, separated by the crowd, but she stepped up to me again as the last men and women were exiting.

"Your duty is yet done, Spokesman," she said. "Go. Protect the son, and die valiantly before the usurper king." Abruptly she moved and thrust a hand against my chest, knocking me off of my feet and sending me sailing out through the open doors as if I was a rag-doll. My breath escaped roughly - in one part from her hit, in another from her words, and the last from slamming flat on my back against the ground and skidding there for a half a dozen feet - and she grabbed the doors and pulled them shut again while I lay there gasping.

The key shuddered in the lock and dropped out, bouncing a handful of times.

"Stars and Stones," I wheezed, trying to get my air back. A rough hand reached down and wrapped into the front of my shirt, hauling me up to my feet as darkness swam across my vision dizzily. I raised a hand to my head and shallowly sucked back another pained breath as that hand held up, keeping me on my feet, and when my vision cleared up and I stopped leaning precariously to my right, I saw that it was the Midgardian leader that had helped.

"Thanks," I said softly. His expression darkened.

"You have killed my kin, _outsider_. Do not look to me again for aide in the coming battle." He released my shirt and walked away, toward the hill, and I grimaced at his back. The Einherjar were well on the way down to those clouds and the elevator leading to Midgard below, and the man joined the back ranks.

In the back of my head a distant voice echoed suddenly, my subconscious speaking directly to my conscious. _Time is up. The Sidhe King walks again._

"Hell's bells, its already been seventy-two hours?" I asked aloud, eyes widening a fraction. It didn't feel like I had accomplished much at all - for the most part, all I had done was wander from domain to domain of the Nevernever, seeking out information to little avail. I didn't have my staff, my blasting rod, my duster, not even my _hat_. I didn't have the potent mantle of the Winter Knight to aide my strength and speed as I had going into all of this.

And if I was being honest, after feeling what Thor had going for him, and having felt the presence of Ferrovax already, I feared that the one remaining wellspring of boisterous strength I did have left fell pretty damn short even if I could tap it in full now.

A flash of memory, of Lash's mangled soul spread out in a horrific sacrifice binding Lasciel into a cage of obedience, entered my mind. Lash had made certain of that possibility for me. She would _always_ make certain of that, no matter what.I shook my head grimly._ Hellfire is one thing, but what more might she have given me? What more might I have at my command that even Nicodemus may not consciously choose to wield?_

I exhaled tiredly and closed my eyes, reaching toward the power lurking inside where Lasciel and Lash dwelt, preparing to find out the limitations of the Fallen's power, and then the entire cloud range and ground beneath my feet shuddered. My eyes snapped back open as the elevator far below rumbled and swayed. The ground and clouds trembled again, and I had to fall back against the building at my back to keep my feet, realizing that I had finally run out of time.

"The Sidhe aren't just coming - they're here."

* * *

Chapter Thirteen concluded.


End file.
